Who is the creator of Furby?
Furby was the invention of Dave Hampton, who runs the toy and game design company Sounds Amazing! design in northern California. Hampton is a freelance electronics engineer and former Mattel designer who once helped code Atari video games (including Q*Bert for the Atari 2600 system) in the 1980’s. Hampton, who began building robots as a teenager, was inspired to invent Furby when he found the key chain virtual pets (i.e., Bandai’s Tamagotchi and Tiger Electronics’ Giga Pet) very limiting with its small screens, crude graphics, and high-pitched beeping sounds. He wanted to improve on the virtual pet idea by creating a real-world cuddly pet with a more advanced vocabulary. Hampton sold his invention to Tiger Electronics and the rest is history. He seems like a really cool guy and very friendly. I get that impression from the CNN interview. Boise resident Caleb Chung is the co-inventor of the Furby. As of 11/13/98 he couldn’t even buy one for himself even though he wants one – because the
