Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
Mar. 25 -- YOU HAVEN'T HEARD much about Furby lately, but he's still out there, lurking.
McDonald's is giving away mini Furbys with Happy Meals starting Friday.
Expect a repeat of the frenzy that came the past two springs when McDonald's gave away Teenie Beanie Babies: parents ordering Happy Meals by the dozen, throwing some away and making french fry casseroles with the rest. The Furbys will be given out through April 22, or as long as supplies last.
Furby, an artificially intelligent toy, was the hit of the 1998 holiday shopping season, with adults lining up at 3 a.m. to buy them, or paying up to $200 in auctions over the Internet.
Furby parent Tiger Electronics is doing its best to make sure Furby has staying power, producing different versions of Furby so people will want to collect them all. There are eight toys in 10 different body or color combinations, meaning collectors or speculators will want all 80 versions.
The McDonald's Furbys are not electronic, but some of them do make growling noises, wiggle their ears or move their feet.
The full-sized Furby is still popular, though not as hot as it was before Christmas. Over 5,000 sites were registered for Furby auctions with the eBay Internet site, down from 7,000 in early December. Many are already offering the McDonald's Furbys for sale. Are they real Mickey D. Furbys? Many of the so-called "rare" Furbys offered on eBay are frauds, altered versions of regular Furby.
Also popular are people who want to do physical harm to Furby, the talking toy known for its lack of an on-off switch.
There's a site where you can watch Furby be dissected (phobe.com), and even microwaved or have his ears pulled off so blood spurts out (look it up yourself).
So Furby stirs passions, which I'm sure is the way Tiger Electronics, a division of Hasbro, likes it. Tiger would like to make sure Furby isn't just a fad. So far the expert at avoiding obsolescence is Ty Inc., maker of Beanie Babies, which have been riding a wave of popularity for over five years. Ty owner Ty Warner is the reigning genius of collectibles. The secretive company is privately held, and Warner doesn't do interviews. But Warner sure is rich. Earlier this month, he paid $275 million to buy the Four Seasons, the tallest hotel in Manhattan. Room rates range from $515 to $10,000 a night.
But Beanie Babies show signs of cooling off. Prices were down 26 percent over the nine months leading up to this January, according to a Beanie Baby collector site, absolutebeanies.com. So Beanie Babie collectors might find cashing in their prized collections can't even buy them a night in Ty Warner's hotel.
ALONZO MOURNING, MANUTE Bol, Mark McGwire, Luciano Pavarotti, and Tom Arnold are among their customers.
The store: Rochester Big & Tall, which caters to men who are either tall or, uh, large, usually around the mid-section.
The store opened earlier this month at Loehmann's Fashion Island shopping center, at Biscayne Boulevard and NE 187th Street in Aventura. Prices for suits range from $300 to about $1900, and 90 percent of the customers buy off the rack, said company president Bob Sockolov.
Rochester Big & Tall is a privately held company, founded in 1906, and based in San Francisco. This is only the 19th store, and its first in Florida. The company has no plans to build other stores in South Florida, Sockolov said.
Niche retailing is becoming a trend as the clothing industry grows more competitive. Locally, Exit Shops has opened Grand Exit for large-sized women.
Here's a question for you: the department catering to small women is called "petite." I don't think men would go for being called petite. So what would you call a clothing store that caters to short and skinny men? One of my colleagues suggests, "scrappy." So how about a new chain, Miramar Short 'n Scrappy?
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