Social workers have taken a much-loved Furby from a child in Rotherham, after it was ‘blatantly and deliberately’ placed in a bedroom that didn’t complement its pelt. The Furby had been temporarily replayed with after being discovered in a charity shop, but has since been safely rehomed in a bin in the council's lost property.
“If this seems like pointless meddling, you obviously haven’t been on one of our diversty courses”, insisted Rebekah Monkton of Rotherham Council. “Raising a Furby in slightly the wrong type of loving environment could completely mess with its programming.”
8 year-old Billy Fletcher had previously told teachers he shared a pink bedroom with his sister, but failed to notify authorities when his parents decorated the box room a strident blue. “Mr Snuffles had learned lots of words and how to dance to Lady Gaga” said Billy. “I kept him safe on his own shelf, and let him ride in my radio-controlled tank. But the lady from the council said that I hated him, and told me I'd already broken it.”
Monkton insists Fletcher was imposing his own company on the Furby, when he should have been keeping it in its original box. As she explained, “Billy made no effort to tell the Furby where it had originally come from, and seemed resistant to teaching it even a smattering of Chinese.” Monkton was particularly angry that the name ‘Mr Snuffles’ had been inflicted on the toy at such a formative age. “A team of our top re-conceptionists have worked tirelessly to stick a plasticine vagina on ‘Furby A’. We’ve all got our fingers crossed that this intervention isn't too late.”
Furby experts have claimed Rotherham Council’s stance makes ‘very little sense’, pointing out that their behaviour is predominantly shaped with how they’re played with and loved. “As long as you're nice to them, they don’t give a shit about the wallpaper”, explained a spokesman for Hasbro. But Monkton insists that the focus should be on a small 'Made in China' label on the bottom, and vowed to find a new owner who understood the culture of a far-eastern sweatshop.
‘Furby A’ still shows some traces of learned behaviour from Billy, despite three changes of battery and a hard factory reset. Speaking exclusively to the walls of the sanitized plastic box it now calls home, the lucky creature muttered “u-nye-loo-lay-doo?”, before shedding a tear.
