Caught in Cuddly Cross Hairs of Furby Wars

Hang around any toy store in Ventura County these days and you will be treated to periodic delighted squeals and barraged with nonstop nagging, whining, wheedling and tears.

It must be even worse when the children are there.

But most days, of course, the kids are in school, learning how to sit in alphabetical order. It is the parents who are engaged in the raucous business of toy acquisition, which at this point includes futilely trying to secure a Furby or two.

The Furby is this year’s media-anointed Hot Christmas Toy, without which no self-respecting family can bear to live. Like Cabbage Patch Kids and Beanie Babies before it, Furby also threatens to become a “collectible”; cruise the Furby sites on the Internet and you will be promised a lifetime of riches beyond comprehension if only you have the cash and common sense to get in on the ground floor of Furbyism.

So what is a Furby? A press release from The Oaks mall gave me my first hint that I was dealing with something a lot more sophisticated than the stone axes with which I played as a boy back in the Pleistocene era.

A Furby, the release said, is “a cuddly stand-alone animatronic pet.”

Animatronic? Cuddly? The two might make sense if you are a smart-aleck sprout who knows his RAM from his ROM, but I can’t get past the picture of a bunny rabbit gnawing on Pentium chips and leaving a trail of stainless-steel droppings.

“Animatronic,” I’m afraid, bears the same relationship to pet that motherboard does to mother.

In any event, “cuddly stand-alone animatronic pet” might be all of Furby that most people around here will get to know, as there is a severe Furby drought in Ventura County. From the mountains to the ocean, I have discovered but one Furby in any retail outlet, and it’s not for sale, because it’s--pardon me if my voice falters a bit here--because this Furby is defective.

I saw it at the KB toy store at The Oaks.

Someone had returned it because it wasn’t as bright as the others. Over the last month, several shipments arrived and every last Furby was snagged within hours. This is the only one that came back.

It’s the size of a large onion. It’s covered with pink and gray fur and has big eyes and a yellow plastic beak enclosing a red tongue. It looks like any other cutie-pie owlish thing, except for the opaque window between its eyes that hides an infrared sensor and enough computer hardware to run a small bank.

In a pathetic squeak, it says: “Hold me. I’m hungry. Ah-choo. Cock-a-doodle-doo.” Over and over: “Hold me. I’m hungry. Ah-choo. Cock-a-doodle-doo.”

I looked at it with sales clerk Mike Lee.

Lee is a veteran of the Tickle Me Elmo hysteria a couple of years ago. Working at a toy mega-store, he remembers the man who bought four of the $25 dolls and hawked them just outside for $100 each.

Lee turned Furby upside down and shook it a little.

“Hold me. I’m hungry. Ah-choo. Cock-a-doodle-doo.”

Lee knew just what was wrong.

“It’s sick right now,” he explained. “It’s got its moods.”

Even so, this Furby’s bag of tricks was sadly limited. It could wiggle its ears, but it couldn’t do such ordinary Furby things as bounce, burp, dialogue with other Furbys, play games, or distinguish between a fine wine and a pretentious little California zinfandel.

A healthy Furby can yatter on in its native tongue of Furbish. After awhile in your home, your Furby reels off about 200 phrases in English as well. These do not include: “Pay no more than standard retail price of $30.”

Tony Velarde, the store’s manager, said he has seen Furby going at swap meets for $60 or $70, and on the Internet for as much as $400. His phone rings constantly; most often, he figures, it’s collectors eager for a quick buck.

“This morning I was here at 7. By the time I went to the bank at 9, we’d gotten probably 15 Furby calls. I’ve been through other crazes, but . . .”

The phone rang again: Yet another frustrated seeker. “Do you have Furby? When will you get Furby? Is there a waiting list?”

About a month ago, Furby made a crucial appearance on a national TV show.

“All of a sudden, people came in here asking, ‘Do you have one of those things that was on TV last night?’ Other customers didn’t even know what it was, but they wanted one too,” Velarde said.

After that, Furby’s shelf life could be measured in seconds. The store briefly kept a waiting list, until Velarde realized it would become weightier than the tax code. He is hoping for a truckload any day. If it arrives, Furby will be available--no more than two to a customer--starting at 6 a.m. Friday.

“I’m just hoping I get enough,” he said. “I have no idea.”

Regardless of supply and demand, do kids actually like this huggable hunk of artificial intelligence?

“Toys have to do something now,” Velarde said. “They have to talk or make noise. That’s just what kids want--they’re sophisticated.”

He led me over to the yo-yo display.

“Look at this,” he said, holding out a $2.99 Duncan. “This is the kind I had when I was a kid--simple and functional.”

Then he showed me the $12.99 Yomega Auto-Return X-Brain, a yo-yo with a “centrifugal clutch” that allows it to automatically climb back up the string.

“Makes it easy to learn all the classic tricks!” the package crowed.

We shook our heads. I wondered: Will the fall of Western civilization date to a generation that could not be bothered to flex its wrists for Walk the Dog? Do kids still play with sticks and look at clouds? And which is more valuable on the open market--artificial intelligence or natural silliness?

Cock-a-doodle-doo.

Steve Chawkins is a Times staff writer.