There's something about Furbys that is utterly terrifying. Perhaps it's just their cold, dead eyes? What about their soulless dispositions? How many children have been spirited away to some dark hellscape after daring to keep a Furby at home? If you want more proof that these things are utterly diabolical, consider how they used to be offered in McDonald's Happy Meals!
After Redditor nefariousbreed asked the online community, "What harmless children's thing do you find terrifying?" people shared their opinions.
"I can't hold..."
I can't hold a helium balloon outside. It freaks me out to know that if I let go, it will just fly up to the sky. I feel similarly about kites.
"And I hated that song..."
Mary Poppins
I thought she was a witch. And I hated that song about taking sugar with medicine as a kid, I remember being like THEY'RE NOT SICK, WHAT ARE YOU GIVING THEM.
"My neighbor's older brother..."
Teddy Ruxpin. F*** that thing. My neighbor's older brother and his friends took the face off of him and put the cassette in and he was still able to talk and blink. Terrified me as a kid. I would rather take my chances on a Furby.
"When I was 5..."
Volkswagen Beetle. When I was 5 I watched one catching fire in a parking lot next to our house, which scared me already, but then I got run over by one shortly after. Those cars gave me nightmares for years.
"Everyone who had owned..."
Furby, the original Slenderman. Those things are bizarrely creepy, and you can feel the evil emanating from them like a fog.
Everyone who had owned, or knew someone who had, has some story ranging from slightly unsettling, all the way to deeply disturbing.
My own is having a roommate who had one when she was younger, this thing was pushing 10 years old. In the 2 years I lived with her she claimed to have never changed its batteries EVER. Yet every few weeks or months you'd hear it babbling and giggling to itself from its shoebox in her closet. So one day I called her on her BS. Almost 2 years, still talking, you HAVE to have changed batteries. She denies ever opening it up to do so. So I dig it out of the closet, find and open the battery compartment, ready to hurl the fresh batteries at her, and nope. The batteries in there are dingy, old, and 2 of them had burst leaking battery acid all over the insides of this Furby. How it still talked is beyond me, and I'll never touch another Furby if I can possibly help it.
"The parts..."
The parts in Spongebob where characters would turn themselves inside out or something. I was absolutely terrified of that as a kid, and even now it just seems... gross.
"Let me tell you..."
A jack-in-the-box.
Let me tell you, folks, that "toy," if you wanna call it one, is connected to folk tales about devils and evil spirits trapped in boxes that are hundreds of years old. Some inspiration for a kid's toy.
"In the same vein..."
In the same vein of how Thomas the Train is creepy, might I introduce you to Jay Jay the Jet Plane.
"I recently watched..."
I recently watched Disney's Pinocchio (1940) for the first time in about 20 years and I'm surprised how that film didn't give me nightmares as a child because there are some truly terrifying scenes in that movie.
"Growing up..."
Small doors. Growing up I heard a lot of stories about the horror that small doors lead you to, so whenever I see one I just yeet outta there. Also, seeing the movie Coraline definitely helped to make small doors more terrifying for me.
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