There were basically 3 generations of the Furby.
The original 1998 version with the movable mechanical eyes and beak and the 2005 emotion Furby with similar eyes and beak and the 2012 with the digital eyes and a lot of talking and personality.
Lets talk about the original one first or what you do if you find any Furby in a thrift store.
Turn on the button at the base of any Furby and then see if it starts to talk or blink its eyes.
If it doesn’t do anything it may just be dead batteries or coroded battery holder with good batteries or a broken speaker or a tilt sensor not working.
If the price is under $20 you should buy it no matter what and figure it out later because it is probably just a case of eroded batteries and the need to clean the battery department.
So depending on the Furby….the 1998 had a habit of starting and then saying “me not feel so good” and then closing its eyes.
This was a pretty common thing with some of the older furbies and some simply can’t be made to do much more but if you work at it you may get it to do a lot.
After changing the batteries, if it is making sounds then thats a good thing. If it moves but doesn’t make noisees then the speaker wire either came loose or the speaker must be replaced which means taking it apart for 2 hours.
But if it is making some noises and moving a little then turn it upside down…shake it….manually move the eyelids up and down carefully to loosen the stuck motors….tap it all over the place to shake up a sensor or two.
The tilt sensor deep inside looks like a 1 eighth inch diameter steel ball in a half inch tube that is supposed to go up and down when the toy is turned upside down to tell the Furby it is upside down. Often this gets stuck and the Furby might not make any sounds or do anything…but shaking it a bit may loosen the tilt sensor.
Toys have plastic and metal parts and gears and after time they could just decay or get worn out or break from being dropped alot.
Hopefully just shaking it and tapping it will get it to do something.
So lets review what you can do with each of the 3 generations.
Personally although I don’t like digitial eyes I think having two of the 2012 Furbies is the most fun because they will talk and talk to each other in a cute Valley girl type voice which some find entertaining while others find very annoying.
The original 1998 ones especially the Furby babies are some of the cutest looking and sounding toys you will ever see…although they don’t say much and they don’t interact with you at all while the 2005 emotion ones can talk back and forth with the owner quite a bit.
So about the 1998 and how to get it to work….