Alive Enough to Die

A blog about furbies and other robotic and virtual pets. also known as skissors on other platforms

[y2k-internetexplorer]

[bempo]

all my Furby fanart this month! for my sticker club

[its-emimi]

⭐

[its-emimi]

[lawbotcj-deactivated20260402]

[sabrebash]

Furby field notes

[crunchymayo]

Lord, grant me the strength to throw away this box that i'll never use, the courage to throw away this box that i'll never use, and the wisdom to throw away this box that i'll never use

[surreal]

i know ive blogged abt this before but does anyone else remember the study on the children w/ a broken furby who like. removed its skin and cut it into as many pieces as those who were present for the ceremony to be taken far away and buried as a means of appeasing it?? & they like?? defined the skin as the ghost and the rest as the goblin and both were angry that the children had killed it??????????????? please

[surreal]

I read about it in Sherry Turkle’s Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other which btw good book. here:

Keep reading

[mrsbluebertgreggleson]

[Caption: OP’s second post is series of images from Sherry Turkle’s Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other:

First image: “Operating Procedures” is bolded subtitle. Text reads, “In the 1980s, the computer toy Merlin made happy and sad noises depending on whether it was winning or losing the sound-and-light game it played with children. Children saw Merlin as ‘sort of alive’ because of how well it played memory games, but they did not fully believe in Merlin’s shows of emotions. When a Merlin broke down, children were sorry to lose a playmate. When a Furby doesn’t work, however, children see a creature that might be in pain.

"Lily, ten, worries that her broken Furby is hurting. But she doesn’t want to turn it off, because 'that means you aren’t taking care of it.’ She fears that if she shuts off a Furby in pain, she might make things worse. Two eight-year-olds fret about how much their Furbies sneeze. The first worries that his sneezing Furby is allergic to him. The other fears his Furby got its cold because 'I didn’t do a good enough job taking care of him.’ Several children become tense when Furbies make unfamiliar sounds that might be signals of distress. I observe children with their other toys: dolls, toy soldiers, action figures. If these toys make strange sounds, they are usually put aside; broken toys lead easily to boredom. But when a Furby is in trouble, children ask, 'Is it tired?’ 'Is it sad?’ 'Have I hurt it?’ 'Is it sick?’ 'What shall I do?’

"Taking care of a robot is a high-stakes game. Things can – and do – go wrong. In one kindergarten, when a Furby breaks down, the children decide they want to heal it. Ten children volunteer, seeing themselves as doctors in an emergency room. They decide they’ll begin by taking it apart.

"The proceedings begin in a state of relative calm. When talking about their sick Furby, the children insist that this breakdown does not mean the end: people get sick and get better. But as soon as scissors and pliers appear, they become anxious. At this point, Alicia screams, 'The Furby is going to die!’ Sven, to his classmates’ horror, pinpoints the moment when Furbies die: it happens when a Furby’s skin is ripped off. Sven considers the Furby as an animal. You can shave an animal’s fur, and it will live. But you cannot take its skin off. As the operation continues, Sven reconsiders. Perhaps the Furby can live without its skin, 'but it will be cold.’ He doesn’t back completely away from the biological (the Furby is sensitive to the cold) but reconstructs it. For Sven, the biological now includes creatures such as Furbies, whose 'insides’ stay 'all in the same place’ when their skin is removed. This accommodation calms him down. If a Furby is simultaneously biological and mechanical, which is certainly removing the Furby’s skin, is not necessarily destructive. Children make theories when they are confused or anxious. A good theory can reduce anxiety.

"But some children become more anxious as the operation continues. One suggests that if the Furby dies, it might haunt them. It is alive enough to turn into a ghost. Indeed, a group of children start to call the empty Furby skin 'the ghost of Furby’ and the Furby’s naked body 'the goblin.’ They are not happy that this operation might leave a Furby goblin and ghost at large. One girl comes up with the idea that the ghost of Furby will be less fearful if distributed. She asks if it would be okay 'if every child took home a piece of Furby skin.’ She is told this would be fine, but, unappeased, she asks the same question two more times. In the end, most children leave with a bit of Furby fur. Some talk about burying it when they get home. They leave room for a private ritual to placate the goblin and say good-bye.

"Inside the classroom, most of the children feel they are doing the best they can with a sick pet. But from outside the classroom, the Furby surgery looks alarming. Children passing by call out, 'You killed him.’ 'How dare you kill Furby?’ 'You’ll go to Furby jail.’ Denise, eight, watches some of the goings-on from the safety of the hall. She has a Furby at home and says that she does not like to talk about its problems as diseases because 'Furbies are not animals.’ She uses the word 'fake’ to mean nonbiological and says, 'Furbies are fake, and they don’t get diseases.’ But later, she reconsiders her position when her own Furby’s batteries run out and the robot, so chatty only moments before, becomes inert. Denise panics: 'It’s dead. It’s dead right now…. Its eyes are closed.’ She then declares her Furby 'both fake and dead.’ Denise concludes that worn-out batteries and water can kill a Furby. It is a mechanism, but alive enough to die.”

Link to the passage on Google Books: here. That’s super interesting, I might have to get this book.

[oodlefurb]

This is the essay that inspired this blog name btw. it's a super good read, I highly recommend tracking to down

[schafpudel]

Gameplay gifs courtesty of @thorjefferson Thank you, Thor!

Listen. PF Magic’s Petz is the virtual pet game for anyone who wants a low-stress, fun, open-ended, Blorbo From Your Floor simulator.

Abandonware, so it’s easily found as a free download and it’s technically not even piracy! Even if it was, pirating from Ubisoft is always morally correct. Download the installers for every game in the series here at Acid Trip, or a pre-installed copy of Petz 4 with a modern compatibility+quality-of-life mod here at Yabiko.

Unlike many other games (such as Animal Crossing, or browser-based pet games), your petz and the world they live in will not suffer on days you don’t open the game. Petz will only gain neglect if you refuse to play with them on a day where you have booted up the game - a “launch day.” Feel free to take a hiatus, because your petz and their little world will be right where you left them when you feel like returning to the game.

Also, petz don’t die. They literally ran a poll in 1997 asking players if they wanted petz to die like Tamagotchi do, and the players said no. Petz will “run away” if severely mistreated, leaving the game, but old age will not destroy your petz.

One of the most in-depth personality systems in any virtual pet game, with multiple factors determining a pet’s temperament, animations, likes and dislikes, and relationships. Discover your pet’s personality through gameplay, find its favorite foods, and watch it form friendships and rivalries with other pets! The petz constantly learn from new experiences, and training can reinforce far more than just tricks and good behavior.

A robust genetics system that allows for truly unique pets to be bred via breed trait mixing and mutations. “Selective breeds” are a common self-imposed challenge in the petz community.

Extremely lightweight! You can easily hold an entire petz game on a flash drive, and still have a huge amount of space left for other things. This thing was designed to run on slow, old computers…. by 1990′s standards.

Ease of sharing - individual petz are stored as .pet files, which were intentionally designed to be easily shared over email and website services on dial-up internet. Nowadays, you can even share them via Discord. Every .pet file contains that individual pet’s appearance, personality, and memories, and updates every time it’s played with. Sending petz on “playdates“ to other people’s games via this file-sharing has existed for a long time, and now petz players even stream these playdates on Twitch sometimes!

A very active modding community, with community-made tools designed to assist modders like Pet Workshop, LNZ Pro, and LNZ Live. Want a sparkledog, a dragon, or a pokemon? Modders have, and continue to, create petz like this beyond what the vanilla game offers.

Also? Petz fansites are like a glimpse into a world where social media didn’t kill the Personal Website as a concept. The sites in the Petz Community Webring are just a handful of the petz sites that exist out here. Many of them are hand coded, with layouts reminiscent of the best of classic 2000′s web design, while taking advantage of modern HTML and CSS features. Even if you don’t want to play Petz, I recommend looking at petz fansites. They’re just as much art as the mods are.

[oodlefurb]

So this is a long shot but I figure I might as well put it out into the world just in case. I am in search of the FurReal Friends Biscuit desktop pet program. Below is the only remaining reference I can find to it online:

Download FurReal Friends Biscuit Virtual Desktop Pet for FREE

The ever loveable Biscuit is now available to download as a desktop pet for you to interact with. Make Biscuit smile, eat, run and much much

If you're old like me you might also know this kind of program as a screenmate, basically it would put a little cartoon dog on your screen and it would run around and do cute animations. I am working on a project related to the old furreal friends robots, so if this sounds familiar to anyone and they think they might have it stuck on an old flash drive or something please get in touch

[oodlefurb]

It's been a while since I shared this so figured I would bump it up again. Thanks to boba-online we've found the download page in the wayback machine, however unfortunately the file itself was not archived: https://web.archive.org/web/20081229094308/http://www.hasbro.co.uk/biscuit.html

[oodlefurb]

exciting news! A re-release of the classic FurReal Friends Biscuit My Lovin' Pup has been spotted at Costco. He costs $139.99, and is also available for purchase online: https://www.costco.com/furreal-biscuit-my-lovin%E2%80%99-pup.product.4000283836.html

This release is sporting a new purple collar, but otherwise appears to be pretty faithful to the original. It's super cool to see a classic bot like this back in circulation, and hopefully, if Biscuit does well, we might see more like this in the future!

[oodlefurb]

Which Robo-baby is worse?

American version (left, blue/silver color)

Japanese version (right, red/pink color)

They're both equally horrible

I actually think they're cute (????)

Voting ended onOct 17, 2024

please reblog for larger sample size

[gemfeathers]

Dah noh-lah wah!

[oodlefurb]

Had a pretty crazy day thrifting yesterday, my parents were in town and we ended up hitting 4 stores and I found a lot of bots!

Store one had the most, they had 2 literally overflowing bins of stuffed animals and I had to dig around for them. I found some other interesting critters too:

Store two is my usual favorite, and it did not disappoint!

Yes there was a second peak a roo guy lol, and yes that is a freaking i-Dog in amazing condition, spoilers but that came home with me.

The last two stores were less successful, the third store was actually total bust, no bots at all, and the fourth only has one sad little Hatchimal

To make up for it though, I will share a couple more random finds that temped me before I share the final haul

(is it just me or does the frog look like the default xp avatar lol)

Anyways, this was the final haul. I ended up getting the first Peak-a-roo we saw, which was slightly cheaper but didn't come with the baby. I might crochet a replacement baby though, the real one is hard plastic and not even that cute. Everyone worked except the Honey (the animagic horse). Despite looking mint on the outside, inside she has really really bad corrosion, like the contacts straight up rusted, so I'll have to see if I can fix her. If not, I'm still pretty satisfied, especially with the i-Dog which I think was the big win of the day.

[oodlefurb]

Has anyone coined a term for this phenomenon/aesthetic? because it's been a trend across all girls toy design, not just plush, and seemingly kicked off in the late 2000s to early 2010s

Littlest Pet Shop is the earliest example I know of

Compare 90s Littlest Pet Shop vs the 2005 reboot vs 2010 era toys. The designs just trend more cartoon-y and rainbow-y over time

FurReal Friends were another victim, with a sharp shift happening around 2012 towards big googly eyes

And we can't forget the Beanie Babies/Beanie Boos! The Boos launched in 2009

Even the Ubisoft Petz games took a swing at this style for a couple games, though it failed to save the brand lol

Build a Bear admittedly still offers both, but the Honey Girls line is still a good example of the phenomenon in action

And of course we can't forget our friend the Furby, just the latest victim to this phenomenon.

Now this probably just a case where one brand started using this aesthetic, got successful, and everyone else started copying it to the point where it's now the default. Probably with a big pinch of "toys are being targeted to younger and younger kids" thrown in as well. And maybe it really does test better with kids, idk. But I know when I was a kid, I would have picked the more realistic one, every time.

[oodlefurb]

Twas a robot-filled day at the thrift store this morning.

Firstly, there were a total of five modern FurReal friends type pets that I left behind:

Along with this super cool clear blue vintage PC tower. I badly wanted to take home but knew I wouldn't actually use. I really hope it ends up in the hands of an enthusiast!

I didn't leave empty handed though! Here was my final haul:

3 zhuzhu pets - these guys came out past time and are pretty basic so I'm not that into them, but figured I should at least pick up a couple for my eventual robopet videos. The brown one kept making noise as I walked around the store, so that was fun lol

2 girly DS games - I think the Lovely Lisa game must be a port of a Licca-chan game, I'll have to do more research. But for $2 a pop they were worth it for the boxes alone lol

A bot I didn't recognize at the time but research shows is an Oogie, a sort of Furby competitor by Playmates. I always love discovering a new vintage bot I didn't know about.

And the star of the show, a Wowwee Robosapian! My brother had one of these back in the day I remember it being super cool. He sadly didn't come with the remote but if works I can maybe source one from eBay.

Also this technically doesn't count because it was from FB Marketplace and not the thrift store, but I also snagged this amazing Furby bag this morning and I'm already so obsessed lol

[oodlefurb]

so my partner bought a super fancy 3d printer, which means no longer have an excuse to NOT 3d print a bunch of vegan furby faceplates and start make my own weird Furby art. so with that in mind, everybody meet my first protege: Murdock, the Lord of Pestilence.

he's already gone home to live with my dear friend @monsters-will-rise (who also provided the awesome pictures, thank you again <3) but I'm already working on planning my next creation.

the faceplate model I used is the one posted by Averybee on thingiverse (link) which is pretty good but I think I'll be tweaking a little bit for my next one as I don't like how little room it leaves for the armature wire for the face bits. all the crochet parts were freehanded by me, though I was definitely inspired by some of the other great crochet furbs that are already out there.