Over the last 40 or so years, there's been no shortage of Chewbacca-related swag. Ranging across the board from action figures, plushes, bobbleheads and "Wookiee Cookies" cookbooks (yeah, that’s a real one), ‘ole Chewie would be set for life with residual money if he were actually a real person and not a fictional furball owned by Disney However, "Furbacca," the latest attempt to merchandise Han Solo’s cacophonic co-pilot by way of the Furby toy line, has given us something that would probably best be described as an amalgamated abomination of creepiness. It needs to be seen to be believed - then killed with fire!
According to a report from Mashable spotlighting the demonic doll, this "next-generation" version of the Furby doll depicts him "dressing up like everyone’s favorite Wookiee." That would be my assessment as well, but it seems that Furby has done so by flaying our Falcon-flying friend and started wearing his skin to look like some kind of guard dog at the satanic portal to another dimension where Lucifer edited Jar-Jar Binks into the Original Trilogy, making him the hero who blows up the Death Star in the culmination of a series of accidents beginning with one misplaced banana peel. Those wide, vacant glowing eyes seem to want to violently violate your soul and drop it off on the corner of some sleazy red light district, kick it out of the passenger door and leave it a 5 dollar bill. Cliff’s Notes: It’s FREAKING CREEPY!
Of course, many will remember Furby as the most highly-sought MacGuffin of parents with young children during the 1998 Christmas season from Tiger Electronics. (Maker of countless dot-matrix-based, headache-inducing handheld "video games" in the 80’s and 90’s.) The talking, blinking, dancing doll of ambiguous biological taxonomy managed to make a lot of early eBay scalpers quite a bit of misbegotten green with giant markups. That, however, seemed to be the demonic seed which has led Furby on the long and winding road to this latest Chewbaca-themed destroyer of innocence. Where’s Wardaddy Collier when you need him?
Furbacca will provide owners (ones who don’t mind owning the embodiment of evil) with interactive responses based on voice commands and touch sensors. However, according to the Mashable report, this little thing can even get angry at you, and those soiled drawers-inducing LCD eyes will visibly display his wrath… right before your eternal soul is shoved into a meat locker of misery (I may be editorializing a bit). On another rather interesting note, Furbacca can actually react to Star Wars-related visual stimuli such as pictures of X-Wings fighters, Imperial Star Destroyers and Hayden Christensen not conveying believable pathos (not sure about that last one, but the concept works.)
While he holds the distinction of being the only Star Wars-themed Furby, the miniature eggs on this bandolier actually represent the potential to hatch "Furblings" on the Furby app that would resemble other Star Wars characters. Why? Because tempting kids to collect worthless transcendental things is smart business.
Furbacca will be available at stores this fall, just in time for more signature Christmas chaos, retailing at $79.99. Hover around that rabbit hole at your own peril! Don’t say that I didn’t warn you!
