We were sent a purple Furby at first, but sadly that was badly damaged in the post and had the dubious honour of being possibly the first Furby Connect to go back. Furby is also available in teal, blue and pink, and our replacement Furby was blue.
Your Furby is packed in a nice little box, and is pretty quick to open. You'll need a screwdriver to open the battery compartment to free the Furby from his cardboard, but you need to do this anyway to install the batteries (4 x AA, not included).
The Furby box also has the all-important Sleep Mask. Unlike the first Furby back in 1998, you can send the Furby Connect to sleep and he'll stay that way until you decide different. No more being woken up at 3am by a chattering Furby, or startled when you walk past one and it suddenly bursts into action. It's a massive improvement.
The mask clips on, and it's quite hard to locate at first, but when you have it right it stays in place, and your Furby will run through a little snoring routine as he goes to dreamland...the mask is also interactive in ways I don't understand, and possibly more will become of this connector on Furby's forehead later on...
Aside from sending him to sleep, there are several ways to interact with your Furby. You can chat to him, sing to him or play him music, move his antenna, hold him, shake him, rub his belly or tickle him, or even turn him upside down.
You feed Furby by opening his mouth and stroking his tongue, and you can even pull his tail, although that seems a bit mean.
His reactions are really varied and although you can maybe take a guess at roughly what he'll say and do, he is full of surprises. Furby can move his body, head and ears, as well as his eyes, which have over 150 different animations. Some of images are notably 'eyes' and others are far more of a screen view, with all kinds of different images and patterns. It works really well, but it's a bit weird seeing a rainbow passing across his eyes.
His antenna also lights up in various colours depending on whether he's sync'ed with the app. or receiving information. Blue means he's just received an update, a lot of which will be to add to his vocabulary. Furby updates automatically, and he now knows what date and time it is, and will at times react appropriately - I'm excited to see if anything special happens on Christmas Day!
The Furby Connect can talk, in Furby language, and he also has lots of understandable English right from the start. Hasbro claim he starts with 1000 phrases, and will update via bluetooth to expand that repertoire. He'll even sing and laugh, burp and pass wind!
He is pretty good at leaving time for the child to answer or react before he starts moving and speaking again. If you are lucky enough to have a friend with a Furby Connect, then they will also talk to each other without any human involvement...
The Furby app. is a nice little game where you raise and look after little Furblings, earning items to care for them by completing simple challenges and digging up treasure. It's intuitive and incredibly easy to grasp, rated PEGI 3 and I think any child of 3+ will be able to enjoy playing with it.
Here's a look at what Furby is capable of as soon as he has his batteries in:
It's not necessary to have a Furby to play the Furby Connect World app. or vice versa, but they will give each other a boost, and interact with each other, which is really cute at times (when you hatch a Furbling in the game or feed your Furby), and funny at others (when your Furby goes to the loo!).
It's hard to fault the Furby Connect really. We've had no issue connecting to the app. or understanding how anything works. He's intuitive and fascinating, and actually very sweet. My boys think he's great and I think my 6 year old secretly loves him. Being able to switch him off is great. He is understandably heavy on the batteries, they'll be gone in around a week or two of regular play, but personally I think that's to be expected.
The Furby Connect is suitable for children aged 3+, and available to buy now. At £99.99 it's definitely a main present, and one beyond the reach of some parents, but is currently on offer at many good toy stores instore and online, including Toys R Us where today (16/10) it's currently £69.99!
Hasbro sent us our Furby Connect for review
THEY R AWESOME
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