Furby: The 1998 Toy That Got Banned by the NSA
Furby is the robotic owl-hamster toy Tiger Electronics launched on October 2, 1998, and it talked almost entirely in gibberish “Furbish” out of the box before slowly mixing in English as it “learned.” It sold 1.8 million units in about ten weeks that Christmas, triggered real fistfights over the last ones on shelves, and in…