THE TALK OF THE TOY WORLD; INTERACTIVE CHARACTERS BRING A NEW ELEMENT TO PLAYTIME.

Byline: David Bloom Daily News Staff Writer

It's cute, it's furry, it makes lots of adorable noises. It knows when you're around, and it misses you terribly when you're not.

No, it's not the new pug puppy the kids just got. It's the Furby, the toy kids - and many adults - are clamoring for this season.

Maybe you'd rather have Stop My Hiccups Dil Pickles, Interactive Babe, Sing-Along Blue, or Amazing Amy. Take your pick. Plush toys wrapped around simple computer chips have taken over toy store shelves, at least until frantic parents snatch them up and take them home.

Sales of the Furby and other interactive toys have been high, with Furby-maker Tiger Electronics projecting that it will sell 2 million of its tiny products by Christmas - and still won't meet all demand. Other companies are also reporting great sales success in an otherwise desultory season.

But should you bother to buy one of these interactive toys, given prices of $30 to $75 apiece?

``You can go ahead and buy these things if you must,'' said Dr. Stevanne Auerbach, director of the Institute for Childhood Resources in San Francisco, and operator of a Web site (www.drtoy.com) that rates toys based on their appropriateness and playability. ``But no toy is a substitute for parents interacting with the child. ... To rush out and buy a Furby is really for the parents. It's a marketer's dream.''

Indeed, marketers are smacking their lips over parents' frenzy over the flurry of new computerized products this season.

Interactive plush toys have come a long way since they first emerged a decade ago in the form of Teddy Ruxpin, the teddy bear backed with a cassette tape of responses. Relatively few similar toys were successful at pushing the technological limit until last year, when such tiny electronic doo-hickeys as the Tamagotchi from Bandai Electronics and Giga Pets from Furby maker Tiger Electronics arrived on the toy frontier. And as dazzled as kids were by those attention-starved gadgets, they're almost primitive compared to this year's generation of fuzzy, logical fun.

My Interactive Pooh, one of the few interactive toys this season that needs a computer connection, has substantial power to do such things as learn and remember a child's age and birth date.

The talking toys that need no link to a computer are equally impressive by toy standards. The Amazing Amy doll, for example, speaks about 10,000 words and has sensors that let it know whether the outfit it's dressed in or the food it's being fed is appropriate for the time of day, said Gina Beebe, Playmates Toys senior vice president of marketing.

``Amy knows what she needs and asks for it,'' said Beebe. ``She will say she doesn't want to wear pajamas at noon, with sensors in her clothes so she knows what she's wearing. If you try to feed her a cookie at 8 a.m., she won't want it because it's not breakfast appropriate.''

The 6-inch-tall Furby, thanks to the microprocessor chip, fits comfortably into its compact little coat of fur. It has an infrared send/receive sensor array in its forehead that can send data to (or communicate with) another Furby. There's a microchip wired to a microphone, enabling Furby to respond to noise. Switches planted on the Furby lets it respond to petting and motion. And as if that weren't enough, its computer brain lets the toy put together about 800 phrases from a 200-word ``Furbish'' vocabulary.

So what's the appeal of these toys?

``What (kids) responded to was when the toy responded and interacted to their questions and the issues that come up in their everyday life,'' said Keith Cohn, vice president of marketing for Equity Toys of Los Angeles, makers of Interactive Babe. ``It also had all the hugging and kissing that the kids really like.''

Oh, you mean the Furby does all the things a parent, a sibling or a friend should? How novel.

If your child won't stop whining until you join the growing masses of interactive toy buyers, so be it. But, Auerbach advises, ``In addition to that, take the time to play with your child, whether it be art or playing jump rope or something else. Kids really appreciate their parents doing things with them.''

Dr. David Feinberg, a psychiatrist at the UCLA Medical Center who specializes in child development, agrees.

``The best toy is the box that the toy came in, because it becomes a flying saucer,'' said Feinberg. ``It's a blank screen that allows a child to expand their imagination. The toys that don't allow you to imagine don't get played with. It's not fun. There's not a lot of creativity with it.''

That tabula rasa for the imagination is a key to a toy that stimulates a child's mind, Feinberg said.

Interactive toys are beginning to provide a broader array of options and interactions with children, but Feinberg remains skeptical that it is broad enough, at least not yet.

``It's like the Tamagotchis, no one has them anymore,'' Feinberg said. ``There may be a few of them hanging from backpacks, but no one's playing with them anymore. Whereas if you give a kid a teddy bear, they are playing with them for years.''

Even some toy company execs acknowledge there are limits to what they've created.

``Because of technology, toys have gotten more sophisticated,'' Beebe said. ``Maybe to us its strange, because we didn't have that. But these kids expect it. But I also think there will always be a place for basic imaginative play.''

So you want to get a real interactive toy? Get down to the playroom with your child. And think about getting that pug puppy.

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5 Photos

PHOTO (1--Cover--Color) Look What's Talking

Toys with microchip minds take over the world

(2-4) Plush toys that run on computer chips, clockwise from top left, Stop My Hiccups Dil Pickles, Sing-Along Blue and an array of Furbys are disappearing off store shelves this holiday season.

(5) Children who tested Interactive Babe especially liked talking with the little pig.