Off brand Furby

When I was ten, I went through a strange phase where I was obsessed with obnoxious electronics. The louder…the better. In fact, this was the same time where I had a giga pet for every (pants) belt loop hole. When one would start screaming at me, I would have to check every loop hole to figure out which one was hungry or just took a massive pixilated dump. I would get up all hours of the night to feed these bastard chunks of plastic joy. Needless to say, giga pets + me = ring + Gollum.

So when the furby came out, I about lost my mind. I wanted one so badly that I even went to the extent of pretending that I once again believed in the jolly man named Santa and handed my parents a letter to “give to him.”  But, since my parents had strong religious views and didn’t agree with something random about the makers of furby, they told me I wouldn’t get this hunk of obnoxious joy.

Christmas rolls around and I unwrap a small gift in the form of a box. As soon as the wrapping paper came off, I was torn between the emotions of euphoria and confusion. My parents got me an off brand furby. But this was no ordinary off brand furby. This furby was fat, white, had red eyes, and long ape like arms ending with tiny human hands. It looked like a mentally disturbed abominable snow man. Although creepy, I have to give my parents credit for effort. To this day, I still have no idea where they would even find such a strange looking thing.  

I remember staring at this demon doll as it greedily told me in a possessed sounding voice, “FEED ME! I’M HUNGRY,” while blinking its bright red eyes. Of course with my vivid 10 year old imagination, I began to envision this demanding doll suddenly coming to life and killing me, if I didn’t do what it told me. (I shouldn’t have watched Chucky.) It was like a bad relationship where I felt forced to do whatever this doll demanded, which consisted of constantly pressing down on its pink tongue to feed it. Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore and threw the off brand furby in the trash can with the same expression on my face that Frodo had before dropping the ring into the lava.

The moral of this story is- stick with giga pets.