The oddbody Furby community turns '90s kids' toys into lovely nightmares
Devin Gardner makes some fucked-up Furbies, but they're widely loved on Instagram and Tumblr.
Hunched over his desk in his bedroom turned workspace, the 24-year-old painstakingly "skins" vintage Furbies by removing their furry casings. After separating the toy's eyes and beak from its electronic core, he hunches over a comically tiny sewing machine and constructs a new body. The lengthy, snakelike creations are known as "long Furbies." The squat, hefty ones are known as "loafs."
Once the corporeal form is complete, Gardner attaches the Furby's original face onto its new flesh prison, resulting in a kind of plush Frankenstein. When a new member of the "family" is born, he photographs it and posts it to his Instagram account, long.furby.fam, which has grown to more than 13,000 followers since its start earlier this year. To make content viral, Gardner stresses the importance of creating something concise, consumable, and bizarre. He thinks of his Instagram posts, where he poses his Furbies in a variety of absurd scenarios, as skits or jokes.
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"I think as far as the overall appeal to them, it's almost like a perfect storm of '90s nostalgia with off-the-wall meme humor," Gardner said during an interview at his apartment in Burbank, California, where he cobbles together his creatures. Calling them "not grotesque, but unnatural," he said there are "so many conflicting things [with the Furbies] that it's just fascinating."
SEE ALSO:On vacation? Please post as many pics as you want.While long.furby.fam is one of the more popular modified Furby accounts on Instagram, the niche hobby community also thrives on Tumblr and Discord. In these corners of the internet, the creatures are known as "oddbody Furbies."
Gardner poses with his children.Credit: morgan sung / mashable
Gardner's bedroom turned workspace is his laboratory for modified Furby experiments.Credit: morgan sung / mashableThe first long Furby in known internet history was built by Tumblr user FurbyFuzz, who brought a particularly hellish sketch to life in May 2018.
FurbyFuzz's creation (aptly named LongFurby) has been featured in meme accounts and YouTube reaction vlogs, and in the last year, inspired a community of creators to birth more terrifyingly adorable modified Furbies into the world. Tumblr has had a healthy community of Furby collectorsand a dedicated Furby fanbase for years, but the oddbodies marry childhood nostalgia, unbridled creativity, and cursed content into the unholiest throuple.
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Search the #oddbody Furby tag on Tumblr, and you'll not only find long Furbies, but Furbies with skeletal hands, Furbies made entirely of denim, and Furbies mounted onto equine torsos.
The Furby face is the only unifying character trait of the oddbody species. Gardner called the practice "harvesting the face" — if your creation includes the iconic eyes and beak, then it has the heart and soul of a Furby. They don't necessarily need to be from original Furbies; if it looks like a Furby face, it still counts as an oddbody Furby. Creators within the community are even considering manufacturing their own faces by casting resin molds for additional customization.
"They have one facial expression, but can convey all these different emotions depending on how you pose it [and] the lighting," Gardner explained.
He has a point; the vacant, wide-eyed gaze and pleasantly upturned beak runs the gamut of human facial expressions.
https://solareola.tumblr.com/post/182673243985/thiccolas-the-wide-furby-made-of-2-differentBut of all childhood toys to turn into art, why Furbies?
The revived Furby is significantly more palatable than its vintage predecessors; its enormous sparkling eyes, lush fur, and rounded body almost resemble a chinchilla or burrowing owlet who had an unfortunate run-in with a Pixy Stix. But the first Furbies were nightmare fuel.
Originally released in 1998, the multicolored electronic rodents laid the foundation for millennial and Gen Z's love for all that is cursed. With its working eyelids, unsettlingly detailed irises, and ability to "learn" English words, it's no surprise that so many young adults have an affinity for surreal humor.
"I love the kind of eldritch horror aspect of taking something that's meant to be cutesy-soft-adorable and turning it into a disturbing art project," Violet, a member of the Discord server Odd Bodies & Kind Souls said. As someone born in the mid-'80s and "on the upper age range" of millennials, she remembers growing up with Furbies. "It feels a little subversive to take a toy from my childhood and juxtapose it into a body horror kind of thing."
She's referring to especially grotesque oddbody modifications, like Tumblr-famous Charlie, a Furby whose torso was bisected with a pair of dentures and mounted onto sinewy legs. Charlie is a monstrosity, and he's deeply loved.
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Violet added that there's a "certain primal joy in sharing something cursed" with other people. While adorable kittens and wholesome baby videos may pull peoples' heartstrings, so do garish monsters who lurk in the uncanny valley like Charlie. That primal joy extends to sharing other cursed pop culture, such as the beloved blobfish. Or take the generation-wide obsession with Shrek. Bonding over cursed content is like sharing an inside joke: You may need to wash your eyes, but you're in the know. You getit now, and you can share that with everyone else who gets it.
"I love things that are both extremely cute and also things that make me shriek and laugh as I yell 'CURSED! NO! DEEPLY CURSED!'" Violet said in an Odd Bodies & Kind Souls channel made to answer questions for this article. "Both make me experience joy."
Childhood nostalgia is a huge draw for many in the oddbody community, like artist Himezawa, who was born in the '90s. In a Twitter DM, they said they "love cryptic memes" and adored the Furbies they grew up with.
"I'm glad they're getting a comeback that way," they said. "I guess it's tied to media and the availability of information and constantly being able to find new things. But there are only so many things out there, and the weirder it is, the better it sticks."
They especially enjoy giving their relatives a laugh by posing their homemade Furby around the garden.
Himezawa's long Furby says hello.Credit: himezawaPart of the appeal, according to Gardner, is remembering just how questionably appropriate childhood toys used to be. He calls the '90s and early 2000s a "creative clusterfuck of toy ideas," reminiscing about pregnant Barbie dolls with detachable bellies and "Puppy Surprise" stuffed dogs who "gave birth" to smaller stuffed dogs. They're "so ingrained" in our earliest memories, he reasons, that even if you didn't own them, "there's still a fondness and appreciation of just how out of the box toy ideas were becoming."
"You've got Furbies, but alongside them you've got Trolls, Tamagotchis ... I think there will always be a belovedness for the horrifying things we market to children," Gardner said.
The "Puppy Surprise" toys inspired Gardner to create a thick, oblong being he named "Mother Loaf," a squat neck pillow-shaped Furby whose underside is graced with a storage pocket. He calls the pocket Mother Loaf's "womb," and has taken to horrifying his Instagram followers by posting photos of various Furbies emerging from Mother Loaves.
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"I don't think this ever should have been made," he joked.
Gardner began sewing his lengthy children together after reading about long Furbies in Vice. He said he "just couldn't stop thinking about these creatures," and after an unsuccessful search for a long Furby for sale, decided to make his own. He didn't have any sewing skills — much less a sewing machine — but was confident he could "figure it out." His first long Furby was a crudely sewn tube with the head of a traditional Furby, which horrified his roommates but awoke something in him. Gardner began an Instagram page dedicated to his newfound passion project, and after he was laid off from a job at a social media company earlier this year, turned to selling oddbody Furbies into his main gig.
"It kind of became my mission to make long Furbies accessible to anyone who wants one," he said, laughing.
Since its start, Gardner added, making oddbodies became a way to flex a creative muscle he didn't get to use much at his desk job. In pockets of the oddbody community, bringing a new Furby to life isn't just a labor of love, but a dedication to an art form.
Caroline Persephone Andromeda Alexandrine Magnolia Buttered Noodle the First — referred to as Buttered Noodle for short — is hailed as something of a goddess among the oddbody Furby community. The custom Furby not only features luxurious dusty rose fur, six skeletal arms with movable fingers, and glittering eyes that contain galaxies, but also, she's fully functional. Her painted beak opens and closes, her lashes flutter up and down, and she can converse in Furbish, the default language of vintage Furbies. Measuring at a whopping six feet long and as heavy as her maker's dog, Buttered Noodles is a masterpiece.
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Violet calls the Furby fandom "transformative, rather than curative." If a curative fandom — think Funko Pop figurines and vintage comic books — puts value in preservation and perfection, the oddbody enthusiasts do the complete opposite. There's no value in "mint condition" items or certified original pieces.
"That type of hobby is about preserving the original and stick[ing] true to 'canon'" Violet continued in the Discord channel. "But we're transformative. We're about taking the 'canon' and transforming it into something personal and unique."
It's a sentiment shared in the first Toy Storymovie, when Andy's beloved Woody is scooped up by a rapacious toy collector. In his quest to restore Woody to his original pristine retail value, the collector paints over the "ANDY" label under Woody's boot — the one thing that made him Andy's — and promptly locks him in a glass prison.
"For all we're calling this art, though, I think it's really important to note that these aren't creations that go on a shelf or behind a display case," Violet continued. "They're held and played with and photographed and carried around as the toys that they are."
The true value in an oddbody lies in the creativity and technical skill that went into modifying a Furby. Buttered Noodles, for example, may be eerie at first glance, but she's also a beautifully crafted tour de force. An oddbody whose electronic core still functions is highly regarded. Members of the Odd Bodies & Kind Souls Discord often trade advice to ensure their cursed creations can still talk and move even through modifications.
Sy, an Odd Bodies & Kind Souls mod who uses the username Subob, once had trouble getting their Furby to work. When the first Furbies from 1998 power up, they're programmed to do a "little dance" that makes sure all their gears are in place. This wake-up dance is referred to as "cycling."
"I got a new guy, and he'd had a pretty tough shipping experience," Sy explained through a Discord DM. "So he would turn on, but he wouldn't get past the cycling stage. I was getting ready to do a full strip down before someone in a server told me that it was just a screw that needed tightening! Saved me a lot of hassle!"
That sort of intimate expertise of such an obscure toy comes with the modification territory. Factory bugs like "me sleep again," which happens when an failed tilt sensor triggers the toy to shut down, can be easily fixed thanks to fandom members who were so into maintaining Furbies, they unpacked and solved nearly every issue imaginable.
"They bring new life to something, and it makes them so unique," Kai added. "A lot of toys were/are mass produced and oddbodying them feels special. I feel like a parent when I'm done ... like I made this into something that didn't exist before."
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Oddbodies strike a chord for people with disabilities and people who are neurodivergent. As another member, Jay, noted in the Discord channel, many oddbody hobbyists aren't only OK with broken Furbies — like mute ones — but "actively seek them out."
"As someone with chronic illness, it's super refreshing to see people actively wanting these guys that need a little extra TLC," Jay said.
RootGoblin, the admin and founder of Odd Bodies & Kind Souls, says one of the big draws of the oddbody community was "how sweet people are about the broken ones."
"As a disabled adult, 'broken things are still lovable' was a really powerful message to immerse myself in," they wrote in the discussion channel. "Especially when I was largely bed-bound last year."
Hasbro, which still manufactures the modern iteration of the toy, is here for the oddbody community's fascination with turning its popular product into something mildly terrifying.
"The Furby creature as a whole appeals to everyone’s sense of wonder which has led to its perennial popularity," a Hasbro spokesperson said in an emailed statement. "And we love to see that today’s generation is still being wowed by the magic of Furby."
While the pursuit for perfection and social media-influenced image issues are a concern more broadly, the oddbody community is a place of comfort. Creating an oddbody is an act of rejecting traditional aesthetic standards. Some may find the modified toys disturbing, bu the rise of surreal memes shows that the zeitgeist is in favor of oddbody Furbies — the internet thrives off of unrelenting irony and absurd imagery. Oddbodies are a testament to the cultural shift.
It's working out well for Gardner, who recently restocked his Etsy shop.
"Anyone anywhere can see a long Furby and share it," he said. "And everyone everywhere is like, 'What on earth is this?'"
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