Word: toye
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...colony of peaceful, industrious little creatures is ripped off by marauders from afar. Ants and grasshoppers. That too. But in conspiratorial hindsight one might see A Bug's Life, the first feature from John Lasseter and his Pixar whizzes since their 1995 computer-generated hit Toy Story, as the company's rearview metaphor for its battle with DreamWorks' Antz. That similar computer-animated cartoon was conceived after the Pixar pic but released before it. It's bug-eat-bug in Hollywood's animation wars...
...with most major problems of the late 20th century, it's the media's fault. Each February, a cabal of toy hawkers and toy reporters huddle at Toy Fair in (where else?) New York City. The hawkers try to coax the reporters into naming their toy the "hottest." Virtually every newspaper and TV station runs some version of this hot-new-toy story, which entices visually and appeals to journalism's need to find what's next. This has happened before (more about Cabbage Patch Kids in a minute), but the creation of the Furby--more important, the invention...
...Furby also responds to touch, sound and light and apparently "develops" as a human playmate gets to know it. Indeed, California inventor David Hampton was inspired by the nurture-intensive electronic Tamagotchis he saw at the Toy Fair last year. One Furby advantage over the Tamagotchi: it doesn't die. Instead, the Furby "learns" to speak English, and it can teach a child Furbish, concocted by Hampton from Japanese, Thai, Hebrew and Mandarin Chinese. (Lesson One: "kah a-tay" means "I'm hungry.") Hampton sees his Furbies as the Adams and Eves of a grander world of interactive electronics...
FURBY The hottest and most impossible to find toy this Christmas. Elmo...
...Number of calls FAO Schwarz mail order has received a day inquiring about the Furby, this year's most popular toy...