Its bizarre design combining fur, beak and all-too-human eyes, coupled with unique technology, catapulted the Furby into the toy hall of fame. Since then there have been two new releases, one in 2005 and another in 2012. Tens of millions of these creatures have been sold around the world.

But what’s far more interesting is the place Furbys have occupied online, where nostalgia, customization, and downright weirdness have given them a cultural cache no one could have predicted. They’re even becoming influencers.

Furby peaks and troughs

To start we used Consumer Research to find mentions of Furbys online, and then worked out the quarterly average to see the ongoing trend behind the viral spikes.

Looking at the average first, we can see the online Furby conversation peaked in early 2020 before falling across the year. The start of 2021 saw the conversation’s smallest size in over two years, but this did not last long. A few months later it jumped up and has mostly remained above 40k users a month since. That’s a solid crowd.

The green spikes in the chart pretty much always refer to viral tweets and Tumblr posts that mention Furbys. They range in content from Paris Hilton dressing as a ‘sexy’ Furby in October 2018 to illustrated cat/Furby hybrids.

What is clear, is that there is a steady stream of Furby posts going out every day, with the topics having a lot of virality potential. But why?

Nostalgia, memes, and oddbodies

Most of the viral moments play on the oddness of Furbys, either using them as absurdist stand-ins or references, or implying something comedic about the toy itself. Like this one:

For the average poster, that’s as far as they want to take their Furby content. But there’s a whole community out there that takes this to the next level. The jokes are over, and it’s time to get serious.

Meet the oddbodies.

That’s Longfurby.

You may have heard of or seen LongFurby before. If you haven’t, there’s not much to tell you about it other than it’s a Furby which is very long. Originating as a drawing, Tumblr user furbyfuzz turned their illustration into a physical reality.

This is an ”oddbody”, which is how the Furby community refers to heavily customized Furbys.

The LongFurby is by far the most famous. It’s become a meme in its own right, and has, according to the official Furby Wiki, spawned a number of “subspecies” such as the Wormy (no limbs) and the Loaf (long but the other way).

People have made endless versions to their individual tastes, as you can see across Instagram and Tumblr . A warning if you go looking, while some are cute and impressively made, others are terrifying.

Like Mother Bebis.

There is a whole rabbithole to go down here, particularly on Tumblr, with the oddbody community constantly reblogging, supporting, and communicating with each other. And while this may be hard to understand for some, you can’t deny the workmanship. If the internet is anything, it’s weird and original.

While the absurdity and creativity is the main point, we have to wonder why Furbys have specifically found their place here. What’s key is their familiarity (no matter what you put those eyes and beaks on, you’ll always know they came from a Furby), and their popularity across an entire generation.

This couples together to make nostalgia an important part of all this activity. It’s easy to imagine that every photo, every reblog, every comment comes with a little nod to say “I remember them too”.

What’s also interesting is the popularity of Furby posting on Tumblr specifically. For this year, mentions there are nearly equal to Twitter’s, when usually most subjects see higher Twitter volumes than Tumblr’s. This tells us that something about Furbys has resonated with the platform’s users.

Tumblr has always been known for being a little strange, full of creatives, and community focused. It’s likely this combination that’s made the platform the unofficial online Furby home. And thank god. We may not have got LongFurby without it.

But this platform-specific popularity is key for future Furby interest. Not just because of what’s going on with Tumblr, but with culture at-large.

Here comes Gen-Z

It’s a known phenomena that younger generations will look backwards for cultural inspiration, usually peering 20 to 30 decades into the past. Gen-Z are of course no different, and it’s been well-documented how the 90s and‘00s are influencing them. And now, it seems, even the 10s are starting to make their mark.

Tumblr sits on the precipice of this. It was launched in 2007, but it wasn’t until 2011-13 that it reached its peak of cultural importance. Spawning countless internet jokes, memes, and concepts, the online world would be a different place without it.

According to reporting in the Financial Times, Gen-Z are making Tumblr their home as they seek out to quench a nostalgia for a time they never experienced.

That means we have a few aspects feeding into each other:

• Tumblr already being popular for Furby posts
• A growing faux-nostalgic interest in Tumblr amongst Gen-Z
• Furbys, having releases in 1998, 2005, and 2021, also making them ripe for faux-nostalgia

This will all be contributing to the sustained online Furby conversation, but it also lays the groundwork for a full blown, irony-fed Furby renaissance. And really, who among us can’t say they were tempted by the begemmed Furby of Uncut Gems fame? Maybe it’s only a matter of time before Gen-Z makes Furby accessories the norm.

But beyond all this, Furbys are staking out another, somehow far more unexpected, place online.

The Furbinfluencer lifestyle

While rummaging around in our data we noticed that Furby-posting is far more popular in Japan than anywhere else. In 2022, for every million people, the country posted 147 times about Furbys. For the US this number is just 97, in Spain it’s 87, and Canada saw 79.

It’s hard to pinpoint the exact reasons for this, it could be any number of reasons, but for the most part the Japanese post about Furbys in the same way as the rest of the world.

But there’s one way that seems to have especially caught on in Japan. And that’s classic Instagram lifestyle influencer content, except with Furbies.

Enter the Furbinfluencer.

The above post comes from @furfur_chan, an Instagram account which is solely well-lit, well-shot, cozy pictures of a Furby (not an oddbody as far as my untrained eyes can see) enjoying delicious breakfasts. Aside from the furry robot, the scenes are indistinguishable from those posted by Instagram influencers.

The account has racked up 33.7k followers since its first post in 2021. It’s not the only account of its kind either. We found a bunch of Japanese accounts dedicated to “Furby lifestyle” content, although @furfur_chan is by far the most popular we found.

There’s @oneroom_imoko.

@furby.hana, of course.

And my personal favorite, the Kramer-imitating @kafka_wh.

Who knew that by the end of writing this bulletin, I’d be jealous of a Furby.

Consider me Furbinfluenced.

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