On May 26, 2001, Dave Hampton, the creator of Furby, sat down with members of The New Public Furby Community site to discuss and answer questions about Furbys.
Highlights[]
The full transcript can be found here, but some highlighted facts about Furbys and Dave himself are as follows:
- He was originally inspired of the idea for Furby after seeing Tamagotchi at a Bandai booth at a toy fair, and also adds he didn't like Tamagotchi very much.
- The only thing Tiger really changed was the ears to make them pointier, and Dave states the designs on the box were more Furby than Furby, saying "everyone likes to leave their fingerprints".
- The voice actor for Shelby was 8 1/2 months pregnant at the time of recording.
- At the time, Dave stated he could not release the names of the female voice actors for Shelby and Baby Furbys, as names released meant the prices would go up.
- At the time, Dave said a Furby show was talked about, but no results, and says the thought of the show went from cartoon to CG.
- Also at the time, Dave had about two of just about every 1998 Furby
- According to Dave, he did not program the weighting system in Furby (If Furby wants food he'll continue to talk about it, If Furby is sick he won't want to play, etc)
- When Dave was around 14-16 he made robots that drove around his house, and spent most of his time taking apart old TVs and radios and putting parts in small boxes
- Dave's pets he owned included an iguana, who he described as "magical" as every time he looked at it he saw something new, and just the way he moved in general he found interesting, and a collie, which he stated protected him from everyone.
- At the time, Dave said he had a design that could do 4 or 5 times as much, but its unknown if this was the Furby that was soon to be released in few years.
- Dave stated a new Furby was to be released in a year or two, but it's likely this was the Emototronic Furby that had really been released in 2005.
- The Cregit prototype showed off at a Tokyo toyfair only used some of his tech, and was not a design of his.
- Dave says the best lubricant for noisy gears is silicon grease, but not too much, and WD40 causes gears to wear too quickly.
- He designed the first colors of Furby and all the colors of Shelby.
- He wrote all the phrases for Furby, Furby Baby and Shelby.
- He had visited some of the four factories Furby was built at in Mainland, China