So I’ve written a tutorial for skinning Furby Booms and Furby 2012! It’s very long and picture heavy, so it’s going under the cut. Lmk if you have any more questions!

After having to skin and wash eight 2012 and Boom furbies, I finally got the hang of it and decided to make a tutorial so that other people don’t have to struggle quite as much as I did at first.



This tutorial is going to be picture heavy but hopefully very in depth, so you can skin your furbies without breaking any of the delicate clips that hold the skin in the correct place.

These two are going to be our models for the evening. There’s very little difference between skinning a Furby Boom (left) and Furby 2012 (right) so most of the tutorial will just be done on the one furby, and I’ll cover the differences as they come up.

Tools

First things first, you need the tools for the job.

-Screwdriver

-Nail scissors / seam ripper

-Something slender enough to fit in the holes for the clips - here I use needle point tweezers

-Somewhere secure to keep the loose pieces, like a plastic bag

Tutorial

The first step is to remove the battery cover - this step is simple enough. There’s two screws on either side that need to be loosened, and then it comes off to reveal the battery compartment.

Which looks like this. The next step is to remove the plastic piece around the edge that holds

the skin into place on the bottom. It’s held on with eight screws, and again you just need to undo these and put them somewhere safe.

Pull it off - being careful of the spikes around the bottom, and put it to one side. Now, we can begin to pull the fur up. There’s very little holding the fur into place around the base, you just need to unhook the tail and tickle sensors.

If you look at the back where the tail attaches, you’ll see two pieces of ribbon threaded together and hooked over a small clip. Undoing this is a simple as using your tweezers to unhook the ribbon, like shown.

The next step is unhooking the tickle sensor. Turn your Furby round to the front and lift the skin. You should find a pocket of stuffing with a wire - usually red - that is attached to the furby with a small white clip.

Carefully pull the clip apart. Try to avoid pulling on the wires themselves as it is very delicate, but the clip should come apart fairly easily.

Now you can pull the skin up further. Although you can’t see it from outside, 2012s and Booms do have a faceplate of sorts like a 98 does. It’s inside the fur instead, and that’s the main part of the skinning that is easy to mess up. The clips are very delicate, and if you’re not sure what you’re doing you can break them easily.

If you’re skinning a boom, you’ll see one small screw on the left, and one clip on the right, with a piece of plastic underneath. Remove this screw first, and then move onto the clips.

On a Furby Boom there are five clips around the face holding the fur in place. One on the bottom, one on each side, two on the top. The ones on the bottom and sides are all removed the same way. The clip has a small piece of plastic that leans into the body of the Furby, so to remove it you need a small, thin object, like tweezers.

Push the clip in as far as it will go, and put your tweezers through the centre hole. Then, push away from the Furby, and lift the clip out at the same time. This pulls the small piece out of the area holding it onto the furby and allows you to remove the clip without any bending or snapping of the plastic. You can then remove the extra piece of plastic under the bottom on the face, and repeat these steps on the clips holding the side of the face in place.

Furby 2012 differences

The area at the bottom of the faceplate on a 2012 is very slightly different from a Boom. Rather than one screw, one clip, and an extra plastic piece; it has two screws and two clips. These are removed in the exact same way as the clips on the Furby Boom - but pulling away from the Furby, not by pressing in.

After you have removed the bottom of the faceplate, move onto the two side clips. Again, these are removed by pushing your tweezers through and underneath the clip, then pulling away from the Furby.

Left Side

Right Side

Now, I usually detach the ear clips next. I believe it is possible to remove the ears and avoid cutting the cotton like I do, but I find it’s considerably easier to just snip the cotton attaching the clips around the ears to the skin. It barely changes the final look of the Furby and lessens the risk you’ll break something.

You need to reach under the skin and up to the ears and just carefully cut any thread you see attaching it to the clips around them with your small scissors, or with a seam ripper. Once it is all free, carefully pull it up and over the ears to free it, and move to the other side. This can be fiddly, but be careful not to bend the faceplate back when trying to reach the ears. This will bend the clips and make your job considerably harder.

Once you have freed the ears, you’ll be left with the last two top clips holding the faceplate on. These are slightly different to the other clips, because you have to press in to release them instead of pulling it out.

Top Left

Top Right

Simply push your tweezers through the small gap, and pull on the clip to remove it.

Congratulations! You skinned your first Furby Boom or Furby 2012! I hope this was helpful :D