Could be interesting to think of features we’d want in the perfected fluffies, or similar things. Let me think…
-Make care procedures as effortless as possible. Design them to love eating and gain nutrients from household trash, if possible. Digestive system as efficient as possible so there’s an absolute minimum of mess, and they don’t particularly mind re-consuming it in dire straits or when grooming, which they need to be able to do for themselves.
-Least whiny voices possible. Fluffies look adorable but being in the room with a talkative one would be a headache.
-Colours customisable and changeable to at least some extent - maybe by adding dyes to the food like with flamingos.
-Significantly more durable than fluffies tend to be portrayed. Having an expensive toy break immediately isn’t a good way to get people to buy a new one, it makes them conclude your products are pieces of shit and demand their money back.
-Either neutered at birth unless used for breeding or the ones sold as pets are specifically engineered to be infertile, to prevent population explosions and keep the prices high.
No external genitalia. All Fluffies are ken-dolls and are given a biological sex upon first meeting their owner. Their owner tells them ‘You are a boy/girl’ and the Fluffy takes on that gender imprint.
No pain receptors BUT still with an understanding of what being hurt means. Basically a Fluffy cannot feel pain in the traditional sense, but if a child or adult plays with it too roughly, the Fluffy will cry out in distress. This is to teach kids to play safer and to avoid adults from misusing the product.
Fluffies only view other Fluffies as friends, never as family. The only mummah or daddeh a Fluffy will ever have is a human, this is to avoid any ‘wan-babbeh’ issues as well as keeping Fluffies to their huggies and wub trademark.
Needs a fucking on/off switch. Voice command, physical button, idc. But if it’s a TOY it needs the option NOT to be played with (without fucking dying).
They should definitely be designed to always be kind, without any Hellgremlin-like tendencies.
I also imagine that they would only want to have special huggies for the sake of having babbehs, since they’re being marketed as toys after all.
I actually think they should keep their speech impediment. It would be much weirder to keep something as a pet/toy if it can speak like a normal human.
The fluff getting its colour because of the food is an interesting idea. I don’t remember seeing it before.
Just a game with some intelligence. You can turn it off, you can turn it on, it can eat, but the food just goes into one of those bags or it gets completely processed. You don’t have to do anything serious with it, it can learn but only to do things that are ordered, like play games, but it can’t break things.
A bit like a sort of kid-friendly Robocop?
Honestly, with the amount of scary science shit you can find, we are extremely close to actually making bio toys
They’ve make robots that can self replicate, they’ve been growing “mini brains” in stems labs that HAVE STARTED TO DEVELOP EYES, you can buy a quantum computer for around $3,000, and recently, you can buy a kit to grow steak in your own home
All they need is to be kind-hearted, not shit everywhere, and preferably have decently small litters. Fluffies fill a niche where they’re “bootleg siblings” - something a child can truly connect with and talk to without having to know animal body language, and without the parents having to make an extra child. Things like wanting kids or not being customizable makes them more alive and helps them teach kids more about life.
That said, you should probably not design them to love eating trash. The last thing people want is for their expensive toy to rip open garbage bags and spread trash all over the floor so it can eat the moldy chicken they threw away. Probably also don’t want a kid’s toy to gleefully eat its own poop, kids would love feeding their fluffy poop and trash and scream-giggle about how gross it is for liking it.
Eeh, we would probably be better off with robots. Custom appearance, upgrade as applicable, parental controls, no pissing or shitting (maybe a fart function cuz lol) guilt free humpability, etc.
I kinda like the idea of a robot servant/personal assistant but no matter how limited the actual intelligence, some one would claim they’re alive and deserve rights.
As far as pets go I can get by just fine with a regular ol’ kitty.
If I could give that multiple likes I would. It stops being a toy when it’s rendered nonviable if you don’t give it energy input. I might also suggest it goes into semi-permanent torpor if not fed but can be rezzed at will without harm, if there’s a way to pull that off, a la battery replacement.
I have to say I prefer pets too. I hate the idea of having children and having a permanent un-toilet-trainable speaker of annoying baby talk in the house would be a nightmare.
I always found the idea of a thing programmed to love you to be hollow and insulting. An animal loves their owner, because that’s just how animals are. They’re unconditional creatures that accept people in the truest way. A fluffy is whatever anyone wants but no amount of headcanon gymnastics can get around the fact that fluffies are made and marketed for cynical profit. Ergo, the more perfect you make them in your headcanon, the more insidious the illusion becomes.
Eh, for some people it’s the only love they can get or feel worthy of. I could see a market for support fluffies as training wheels or a substitute for forming human bonds for depressed/shut-in people, in the same way as a sex doll is used by people who can’t or don’t want to deal with other humans sexually. A dog loves you but it can’t verbally remind you that your family also love you.
I’d argue that an animal’s affection is potent in ways that cannot be neatly encapsulated with words and anecdotes, but I see where you’re coming from. It doesn’t make the depressing root of your point any less depressing but I’m picking up what you’re putting down.