Word: toy
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Much Furby hype originated with the geek-chic set. The magazine you're reading is partly responsible. After Toy Fair '98, TIME ran a Techwatch item mentioning them. USA Today also noticed, and after an electronics fair in May, CBS This Morning did a segment. That ginned up interest last summer, even though Furby's complicated innards meant it wouldn't be ready for stores until fall...
...over the summer--and were further inspired when Wired magazine ran a huge Furby feature in September, breeding even more TV stories. "It was incredible, all these reporters calling up and saying, 'Why is this so hot? You can't find this thing anywhere,'" says Jim Silver, publisher of Toy Book, a trade publication. "But the company hadn't even shipped any--of course they couldn't find it. It became a self-fulfilling prophecy...
When Tiger finished the Furby--on schedule, in October--many more parents than usual knew about the new toy. Initial shipments sold out almost immediately. Now Furbies vanish from Target stores within a few hours of arriving from China. The Web's eToys.com has so few left it will hold a Furby giveaway sweepstakes after Thanksgiving. "If we got 30,000 tomorrow, we could sell 30,000 tomorrow," says eToys exec Phil Polishook. They have only about...
...toy market has never been entirely responsive to its final consumers, since parents are required middlemen. But kids have probably never been so far removed from the creation of a toy fad as with Furbies...
Consider the first toy mania, the one surrounding teddy bears early this century. Their ascendance stemmed partly from adult interest, says Gary Cross, a historian and author of Kids' Stuff: Toys and the Changing World of American Childhood. Yes, the bears were cuddly, but parents liked the story that inspired them: Theodore Roosevelt's saving a baby bear on a 1902 hunting trip. Nevertheless, it was kids who ultimately made teddy bears more than a fad. It took at least four years for teddy bears to sell well, only after kids across the country started seeing them...