Blink Twice to Enter the Portal

For Mayllennial 2024, Lars and I created a buffet of Millennial nostalgia by making a mini text adventure game called Fresh Wizzy’s Radical Tower. Your goal is to outwit a radically fresh 90s wizard with a sick manicure and a crippling Capri Sun addiction. You play the game by entering commands into a simulated AIM chat window. It was very fun to write, but it took some time to figure out how the player should start the game. I wanted to give the player a cue that they were somewhere strange, possibly cursed, before moving them to more familiar settings (a video rental store, an arcade). The question was: “What would a Millennial wizard use to guard the entrance to their magical nostalgia maze?”

The answer: an unblinking wall of 100 Furbies.

Furbies were the must-have toy for Christmas 1998 and precision engineered to be a holiday hit. They combined the speakerbox charm of Tickle Me Elmo with the stylish fluffiness of a Troll. Their roly-poly shape evoked the winsome blobbiness of a Teletubby. They came in several colours, appealing to fiendish Beanie Baby collectors, and felt vaguely pet-like, drawing in kids obsessed with Tamagotchis. No wonder it became an icon of the 1990s.

Except: Furbies are deeply creepy.

The Furby’s character design is certainly distinctive. People often compare the shape of a Furby to that of a chinchilla, but closer inspection reveals a chinchilla that lost its arms in a tragic industrial accident. The Furby creators were tasked with creating an attractive animal-like figure. After consulting reference material, which surely would have included every available species of Beanie Baby and pictures of a platapus, those designers thought: “Nah, too basic. Let’s give it bat ears, human eyes, and a beak sharp enough to crack open cans of pet food.” It is defiantly unnatural, a furry gremlin with spade-shaped ears it can surely eject and use to shovel a grave for your corpse. Nothing conjures the sense of creeping unease and uncanny terror like the droopy-eyed gaze of a Furby.

To further heighten the unease, Furbies also feature basic animatronics. You can prompt your Furby to blink or open and close its beak by petting, poking, or tickling it. Such actions will elicit a range of ominous giggles and wiggles. The Furby will periodically dance a small jig to amuse its keeper, rocking up on its feet like a poltergeist in a Wilkie Collins ghost story. I consider this proof that a Furby would trade your soul to the devil for a single Dunkaroo cookie.

Did I mention that the bat-eared beaked chinchilla with a haunted gaze also talks? The talking Furby is meant to inspire curiosity in its owner by chirping in “Furbish,” suggesting that the more you communicate with the Furby the more you’ll understand it. Over time, however, the Furby gradually speaks less Furbish and more of its localization language, until the new language dominates. This is meant to model how children acquire language but also feels uncomfortably tragic.

I’ve been reliably informed that there are many people in the world who find Furbies cute. They argue that Furbies are loveable weirdoes and embrace Furby’s uncanny qualities. They’re attracted, not repelled, to the babbling beaked visage. Perhaps they see a challenge.

And so: Furby, the perfect creature to guard a haunted portal to the 90s with uncertain odds of escape.

Relive the magic of the 90s by playing Fresh Wizzy’s Radical Tower today!