#interactive pikachu

Hasbro - Pokemon - I Choose you Pikachu

Features: Is an interactive Pokemon plush. You press his hands to make him talk.

Size: 20cm tall (Small toy)

Sources: 1 & 2

Some pages from the Tiger Electronics toy fair catalogue (2000)

Elise Allen wrote lines for a "Pikachu Furby" and "E.T. Furby", (Interactive Pikachu and E.T., I assume) and it seems she was going to work on Interactive Mike & Sully. This is mentioned in episode 4 of a podcast series called "Typin' Toons", which features an interview with Elise:

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27:40-32:05

"The Furby scripts. They're like 100 pages long and it's all charts because you have to track what they're learning along the way. If you pressed E.T.'s hand just once, he might just say 'Ouch'. "

"I did an E.T. Furby, I did a Pikachu Furby, you'd be amazed how many ways you can say 'Pikachu'. Because I mean, there's 'Pik', there's 'Pika'. Like, this is Pikachu. There are some cool things that came out of that, too, because I was gonna write a Mike & Sully one, and they flew me up to Pixar to see an early screening of Monsters Inc., where they still had scratch voices… and they had me create my own version of Furbish."

"They wanted to do a really super special Furby. It was going to be called a Mee-Wah. So he started only speaking his own language, and then wound up learning English… Charts and charts and charts, along this way, I got a new agent who was wonderful and basically was asking me, 'What do you really respond to?'. And I said, my favorite thing, ever, ever in the universe are the muppets..."

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From an article (archived):

"The Interactive Pikachu toy was priced at £23.75 in the A/W 2000 catalogues of both Argos and Littlewoods. This is significant because it is not the original RRP nor a natural price point (such as £23.99), but the price which both Argos and Littlewoods arrived at by communication through Hasbro."

Info Source

I'm sooo happy rn. The Pikachu here is listed for £23.75, as the source mentions. This is from the Autumn/Winter Argos catalog.

Odd thing is, the Pikachu shown here looks like an "I Choose You Pikachu" instead, which is from 1999. Maybe they used the wrong image?? No idea... A better quality scan of this page would be appreciated.

More Information Concerning Interactive Pikachu

Not long after finding the info from the Furby website about Interactive Meowth and Interactive Pikachu in 2021, I found a document talking about Argos and Hasbro that mentions the Pikachu toy. However, I was very confused at the time, thinking, “Is this really talking about the unreleased toy, or is this about something else because Interactive Pikachu was never released?” This was why I didn’t share it earlier. 

But, the document is talking about the unreleased Pikachu toy. Also, I recently found a transcript two days ago, for a court case between Argos and Hasbro UK, concerning the same matter the document talks about.

Some copy and paste work because I can’t be bothered retyping everything:

28/8/2022

Here are mentions of Interactive Pikachu in a document concerning agreements between Hasbro UK and Argos. I have NOT read much of the document, but the document talks about how the price of the toy was changed by Argos and Littlewoods from £23.99 to £23.75. Here’s another important bit of info: "The Interactive Pikachu toy was priced at £23.75 in the A/W 2000 catalogues of both Argos and Littlewoods. This is significant because it is not the original RRP nor a natural price point (such as £23.99), but the price which both Argos and Littlewoods arrived at by communication through Hasbro." I think the image of the Ocean Ripples Furby on a purple background (that’s currently on the wiki) is from the Autumn/Winter catalogue. The Ocean Ripples Furby image I posted earlier came from the same catalogue that the Interactive Pikachu is in. Interactive Meowth is not mentioned in the documents I found, so Idk if it is in the catalogue.

While I still don’t know Hasbro’s reason for not releasing it, the fact that it appeared in an Argos catalogue for 2000 seems to imply that Argos was planning to sell it at some point that year. As for the Ocean Ripples Furby, I don’t know why it’s there but maybe Hasbro was planning to release the generation 10 Furbys that year but didn’t do it. There’s also speculation that the image may have just been used as a placeholder, which is possible.

22/8/2023 

Elise Allen mentioned (links to another post I made) she wrote lines for an “E.T. Furby” and “Pikachu Furby”, and that they were going to have her do a “Mike and Sully” one.

17/9/2023 EDIT: THE CATALOG DESCRIBES ANOTHER PIKACHU FOR SOME REASON; CHECK THE NEXT UPDATE.

Here’s a screenshot of an Interactive Pikachu toy listing with a price of £23.75 in the Argos catalog. The photo looks like a Pikachu plush or I Choose You Pikachu, strangely. A HD scan of the page would be appreciated.

2/12/2024 (UPDATE)

Turns out, the toy in the catalog is not referred to as “Interactive Pikachu”, despite the courtcase stating the Autumn/Winter 2000 catalog mentions "Interactive Pikachu” with the £23.75 price tag. It just mentions the ears and mouth move, its cheeks glow, and it refers to it as “Electronic Pikachu”. This just looks like I Choose You Pikachu. Did someone at Tiger eventually change their mind and decide they would release more I Choose You Pikachus in 2000, instead of a Furby one?

Another thing:

This post is talking about an unreleased interactive version of Pikachu that, unlike I Choose You Pikachu, can move its eyes and tail, speak to Furbys or another Interactive Pikachu toy, has voice recognition, and can battle with Interactive Meowth.

Like Interactive Pikachu, I Choose You Pikachu has blushing cheeks, a moving mouth, and moving ears, but it lacks the other features I mentioned. I Choose You Pikachu also came out in 1999, but Interactive Pikachu was supposed to be released in 2000.

Links

View the document here (archived version)