‘It often sits unnoticed or unpurchased for years, holding who knows how many secrets’: Furby as queer archival artefact

This article explores the parallel relationships between the rise of digitally mediated culture and the viral toy Furby with a specific orientation towards the object’s relationship to queer cultures and online identity-making work. Highlighting hacking, digital content creation and art-based work, all of which intersect with queer cultural spaces, it denotes the curious ways that the canonically non-binary toy aligned with the creation and curation of queer culture. The article further asserts that, even if purely accidental, Furby, as a media artefact, helps emphasize the value of serendipitous archival encounters via the utilization and remediation of a cultural artefact whose abundant presence across physical and online spaces allows for the toy to be a site for queer archival world-making.