Top contender for weirdest online purchase:

_{It’s, uh… not what it looks like?}

This is a silicone beak skin from Yuyu’s Beak Shop, a Japanese hobbyist who intermittently sells small batches of handmade replacement beaks for Emoto-Tronic Furbies.

Being produced from 2005 to around 2007, the passage of time has unfortunately been unkind to the fleshy beaks of these particular Furby models, which have a propensity to dry out and crack.

_{Sleepy Blue is in great condition overall, but his beak was certainly deteriorating.}

A few different options exist in terms of repairs; some people have success painting over the damaged beak skins with different types of liquid plastics to patch the holes without replacing it, while others opt to simply remove the fleshy decay entirely as it does not impact the function of the mechanical beak itself.

It is also possible, after removing the damaged beak-skin, to paint or otherwise adorn the mechanical beak directly. But that’s not the goal today.

_{At this stage the motivation to consider pursuing a PhD is primarily because the semantics of the associated title would make my surgeon alter-ego infinitely funnier.}

Unless you’re arguing the new skin as a form of adornment, in which case that is exactly why we’re here today.

Having great success with repairing Tiger’s voice, I decided to try my hand at dismantling Blue.

_{Marketing executives will be like: “Children’s toys should not incorporate   L A R G E   talons.” And they are objectively wrong. Furbies absolutely deserve   L A R G E   talons, like a cassowary, and only cowards disagree even though they know I’m right.}

Skinning him was not quite as straightforward as with the ’98 models; his feet had to be unscrewed in two separate parts, followed by unpicking his centre back seam and removing several more internal anchor stitches from his ears and mane.

Essentially the Emoto-Tronic Furby beak has five mechanical components; a tongue, surrounded by upper and lower jaws, with a hook on either side.

_{Blue’s beak is white, but the internals of these guys can vary by year and factory.}

Similar to other Furby models, the tongue is a button which causes an eating reaction when pressed the primary food source for all Furbies, of course, being human fingers, while the jaws open and close when speaking.

Unlike other models however, the Emoto-Tronic varieties feature hooks on either side which manipulate the skin around the beak to make facial expressions.

_{Surely re-skinning a beak couldn’t be more difficult than replacing a speaker, right?}

Aside from the visibly deteriorated beak, some of his plastic components have also become quite brittle and unfortunately cracked during the skinning process. Nothing a bit of superglue couldn’t fix, just keep in mind that the ’05 models are notably more fragile than the ’98 models- one of which you could probably hurl clean through a closed window and they’d be fine but we won’t be testing that out here today what the hell kind of sociopath do you take me for?!

_{The surgery was a success. (?)}

Catch me hosting the next season of Extreme Makeover, Blue looks 10 years younger in just 10 minutes!

… Okay, maybe it was more like a couple of hours if we include suturing him back up, in any case the fresh new beak has made his expression look so much more cheeky and energetic.

_{He was so tired and sad before getting a facelift. The moral to this story apparently being that plastic surgery will significantly improve your attitude…? (Ominous foreshadowing.)}

The old beak disintegrated into horrible little flakes as I removed it, nothing worth photographing, just know it was nasty to touch but gloves are for cowards.

We’re done here.