The Furby Boom is the 2013 extension to Hasbro's successful interactive toy line. Like previous Furby iteration, the Furby Boom is an interactive plush creature that can respond to music, motion, and your voice. In addition to the basic Furby behavior, the Furby Boom adds an app component, one that enhances your interactions with Furby Boom, to the point that it reminds us of other interactive toys of the past 20 years. If you were bored by the previous Furbys, then this one will bore you too, but if you're an interactive toy pet collector, then this one will fulfill your desire for something new and improved.
The Furby Boom looks like a standard Furby, though the creature's color scheme and ears are visibly different. Our review unit was the Waves version, which has a horizontal striped tidal wave pattern in its fur, in various shades of blue. The Furby Boom! is approximately nine inches tall and about five inches around. It fits in one (adult) hand and can easily be carried by small children. It's definitely a cousin to the 2005 and 2012 versions of the Furby, and like the 2012 model, the Furby Boom eschews cold, dead plastic eyes for LCD panels that display more emotion and a cartoon-like verve. A third eye in between the physical ones is the Furby Boom's IR sensor, so it knows that someone or other Furbys (Furby Boom and the last iteration) are in front of it. Like previous models, you can play with it by tickling it, petting it, swinging it around, or feeding it by pressing a button on its tongue.
The Furby Boom! app is available for iOS devices (through iTunes) and Android devices (through Google Play), so you can use your phone or tablet's screen to interact with the physical toy. Like last year's model, you can choose a variety of foods on the app's screen and feed them to the Furby. The new app improves on the old by giving you options like naming your Furby Boom from a list of acceptable combinations, monitoring your Furby Boom's vital stats (wellness, bathroom need, cleanliness, and hunger.
Various screens in the app let you tend to these needs, with minigames like a shower or a toilet allowing you to relieve your Furby in each of the stats (yup, it poops!). If this seems familiar, the Tamagochi virtual pet had similar needs. You'll point your smart device toward the Furby to spray it with water or let it sit on a virtual toilet. Stats are shown with bar-like status indicators, and you need to fill the bars to fulfill your Furby's needs (like cleanliness). Ultrasonics between the Furby Boom and your phone or tablet handle the communication, so point your device's speaker at the Furby for best results.
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In a nod to Pokemon, Hasbro added eggs and Furby Furblings to the mix: You can collect, hatch, and raise virtual Furbys on your device, ones which interact with your physical Furby Boom via more minigames. You can also use a QR code on the Furby website and in some stores to add eggs to your app right away.
Our 7- and 14-year-old testers enjoyed playing with Furby Boom, but the novelty wore off just as quickly as it did with the last iteration. The 2012 Furby and the Furby Boom have basic interactivity, mostly saying hello, singing, and dancing with each other. Put two Furby Booms in the same area, and the new guys will call each other by name (if you've named it with a phone or tablet), and have more scintillating conversations and complex interactions. The older Furby doesn't have the software to fully interact with Furby Boom, but there is a base level of interaction built into both iterations. On the whole, it's a good update for the Furby aficionado, but like all technology updates, you'll already know if it's for you based on how you reacted to the previous iteration.
It's D? vu all over again, Hasbro's new Furby Boom melds all the interactivity of previous Furby models with pet management and collecting games.
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