Although I am a bit better now, naïve 7-year-old Colleen was easily prone to wanting the ‘new’ thing. And I made a terrible mistake: I bought a Furby.

Don’t get me wrong, a Furby wasn’t a bad idea. It gave young children, like myself at the time, the opportunity to take care of something. I mean, what is better than giving a child the responsibility of taking care of something and allowing the child to actually hold his or her pet. (All right, maybe only I appreciated that — my childhood consisted of a lot of fish.) Most importantly, to the delight of many parents (including mine), this was one pet children couldn’t kill.

However, an adorable Furby could be an amusing toy. You could play games with it, tickle its tummy, be serenaded by its soothing voice or have it tell you a riveting story. Its interactive nature was better than having to use your imagination with any plastic, plain Barbie. Psh, so overrated.

But it had one fatal flaw: It never shut up. Seriously, it never shut up, even if you took out the batteries. It made those cute noises all the time. Though, after awhile, they weren’t so cute anymore. Even when you interactively told it to sleep, it wouldn’t — or at least not for very long. Thanks, Furby, for many a restless night of sleep. Although I am sure it didn’t help that I was terrified of the dark and ‘monsters.’ I don’t know about you, but something that opens its wide eyes randomly and perpetually makes loud noises does not seem friendly.

Thankfully, the Furby became something of the past as another trend overtook it. Weirdly enough, Barbie is still around. Hm, I guess imagination wins.

— Compiled by Colleen Bidwill, asst. feature editor, cabidwel@syr.edu

Published on February 23, 2011 at 12:00 pm