The enduring appeal of Furby’s cursed DIY cousin, the LongFurby

They aren’t a novel concept. Tumblr user furbyfuzz first coined the LongFurby in 2018. It is a cuddly Frankenstein creation. But just like the 1998 Tiger Electronics toy that inspired it, the subculture has managed to outlast its novelty and remain active nearly half a decade later — it’s no passing meme.

While LongFurbies are most recognizable by the toy’s classic beaked face atop a stretched-out serpentine body, modifications now range from donut-shaped Furbies to sculptures featuring sagging, hairless skin or their faces implanted on just about anything. Across TikTok, Instagram and other social media platforms, accounts featuring modified Furbies amass hundreds of thousands of followers who can’t get enough of their absurd, sometimes grotesque, other times wholesome, content. The LongFurby has gained new followers thanks to this constant reinvention. The Furby Modifiers community continues to expand and embraces creativity from all corners.

“Don’t you want to become a cult leader,” asks a disembodied voice as a glitchy video zooms onto a horned red-and-black demon LongFurby named Kampe. “Since the death of God, there’s been a vacancy open. This void is yours. Here’s how.”

The TikTok clip pans to other creatures, including the account’s titular Furby, Levi. (The featured audio is from Captain Murphy’s “Disciples.”) The account @levithefurbyking, which has more than 57k followers, features surreal, dreamlike posts dedicated to various LongFurbies. With punchy edits that use aggressive filters to punctuate absurdist or existential captions, subjects can be found in various locations. It’s a perfect example of what the LongFurby embodies: childhood idealism warped by the perspective of young adulthood, tied together by a DIY ethos.

The creator, who preferred to remain anonymous, said that LongFurbies’ juxtaposition of being both familiar and unsettling is what first drew them in. Along with Kampe and Levi, they’ve created seven other Furbies: Jorgy, Elphaba, Omen, Argus, Erik, Steve and Bonzo. Each Furby appears on the account as a recurring character.

“So many of the people I follow and who follow me are LGBTQ+, artists, punks, geeks,” they said. “I think the Furby community is another place for people on the outskirts of what’s considered ‘normal’ to find each other, be encouraged and just have space. Being on here has helped me feel less alone and more comfortable with myself and creating.”

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  Bobby Diddle with her LongFurby creations
  
  
  Bobby Diddle
  

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  The bar is open for LongFurbies
  
  
  Bobby Diddle
  

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  Frolicking LongFurbies
  
  
  Bobby Diddle
  

LongFurbies also belong to a growing nostalgia movement from the 2000s. Bobby Diddle is the Instagram account @longfurbs. This account boasts more than 26k followers and features a range of memes and images featuring a Furbie family. Furbies have been a part of Diddle’s life since childhood. She was six when she took a family picture. Diddle stated that nostalgia is an important part of the appeal for those who have grown up with Furbys in their 20s or 30s.

Diddle’s current crew consists of four LongFurbs, and a wheel boy named Ollie — with two additional Furbies currently in the making. Scroll through her Instagram feed and you’ll find images of her Furbies hanging out at bars, going on vacation and getting up to mischief around Diddle’s home in Cincinnati. When she started posting her LongFurbs, she didn’t realize the community would grow so large or so quickly. “I thought it would be dead by now but it just keeps going,” she said, laughing.

Devin Gardner also runs @longfurbyfam Instagram and TikTok. But a large chunk of the fandom today, he said, are people in their younger teens who likely weren’t alive when the toy was at its peak popularity. Gardner and Diddle agreed that Modified Furbies appeal to people because of their uniqueness.

“Furbies sort of fit into a sweet spot because, with how customizable people have made Furbies, it really fits in well with the DIY crowd, the customizing-things crowd,” Gardner said. “I think content consumers on these platforms really enjoy seeing something new being made out of a very weird and sometimes horrifying creature.”

Gardner also spotted the trend late 2018, and was quick to adopt it. Gardner was also inspired after seeing an article. He didn’t have any sewing skills but was inspired to create his own. His modified Furbies, which he created in his studio at home, are now available on Etsy. His content has become more bizarre over the years. One recent TikTok features an omelet featuring glass eyes that is being cooked in a pan while Cookie, his long-haired LongFurby, watches in amazement. Several TikToks feature Gardner wearing a round, white Furby suit performing unsettling things like slicing a toy worm with a pizza cutter, cracking an egg filled with goo — the list could go on.

“A lot of meme subjects will hit a peak really quick and then die and go away forever,” he said. “But I think part of why LongFurbies and modified Furbies have stayed around for this long is because of what a blank canvas they are.”

As the modified Furby community grows, it is more inclined to absurdist interpretations and surrealist take on this classic children’s toy. Through her bizarre silicone sculptures, Sophie G. Stark is a favorite among Furby fans. Skinby, her first creation, was modeled after the Furby’s classic Furby shape but with no fur. Created from a mold — including the eyes and beak — its fleshy pink skin sags as tufts of gray hair jut out from its ears and head. Stark was not aware of how many Furby fans she had created. It wasn’t until her work started selling through being posted in a Furby fandom group on Facebook that she realized just how big the subculture was.

After Skinby, Stark started experimenting with other grotesque textures she could replicate with silicone, including baked beans, moldy bread, Spaghetti-Os, worms, shrimp and an Arby’s Beef and Cheddar sandwich. Millions of people have viewed TikToks showing the creatures.

“If you’re making things that are absurd or weird, you’re asking for a little bit of outrage from the viewer,” she said of modified Furbies’ popularity on social media. “And I think some people are –– it’s a very light amount of upset, they’re not actually very upset –– but some people are interested in the thing despite that it’s unsettling, and then other people are unsettled by it.”

Photo: Sophie G. Stark

Her work revolves around body horror and nostalgia. Furbies’ bizarre and disturbing world draws comparisons with the low-brow surrealism in her artwork. She is beginning to pivot into experimenting with other subjects, including a project involving a “gross” turn on Tamagotchi, another nostalgic late-90s toy.

Diddle describes the community as “welcoming, loving and weird.” People create everything from full-on new creatures to jewelry, hats and memes, she says. Perhaps the LongFurby’s world is infinite. And Diddle said they may be around for as long as ’90s babies are relevant on social media.

“(The fanbase has) definitely grown a lot. But I think the message behind the community has stayed the same,” Gardner said. “From the start, it was really about, in an abstract way, accepting and loving these creatures for their uniqueness.”