U.B. Funkeys

» see ubfunkeys.com as it lived, on the wayback machine

~ the obituary ~

Mattel showed U.B. Funkeys at the American International Toy Fair in February 2007, inside a range of toys built to plug into a computer, and the thing reached shelves that August. The starter kit cost $19.99: a Windows disc and a large white USB accessory called the Hub, with two small vinyl figures to clip onto it.

The figures were the point. Each one attached by magnet, with contact points underneath that told the software which character had arrived, and swapping a figure changed your avatar on screen without restarting anything. Extra ones sold at $4.99. The launch collection ran to forty-two figures, fourteen character types produced in three color variations.

The world was called Terrapinia. You started in Funkeystown, a central area connecting zones that each figure type unlocked, and there was an antagonist called Master Lox with henchmen under him. Mattel kept extending it: a Dream State expansion with its Daydream Oasis and Nightmare Rift zones, then a Hidden Realm, a Paradox Green release, and a licensed Speed Racer collection off the 2008 film. The last downloadable version of the software was 4.8.

It ran on Windows XP and Windows Vista. That was the whole list, and when Windows 7 shipped in 2009 the game did not follow it, which is roughly when the line stopped being restocked.

~ the case file ~

~ the hub ~

Calling it a hub was marketing rather than engineering. It was not a USB hub in the networking sense, as MMORPG.com's reviewer noted in 2009, just a large figure-shaped reader with one cable and a set of magnetic seats. The identification happened in the plastic, which is what made the figures feel like keys instead of accessories. Skylanders did the same trick with a glowing portal four years later and sold it to a much bigger market.

~ not sold here ~

Funkeys needed a toy aisle, a US retail launch and a child with rights to the household PC. By 2007 I was twenty-three with TTNet at home and the internet cafe years well behind me, so a $19.99 Windows starter kit for eight-year-olds was never going to cross my path, in a shop or on anybody's shared machine. The whole toys-to-life category stayed on the far side of that distance until Skylanders made it big enough to be unavoidable.

~ offline mode ~

In January 2011 Mattel ended support for the online services. Software updates and online profile saving stopped first. The Funkey Trunk went with them, along with the chat figures and their rooms, the multiplayer games, crib sharing and the official website at ubfunkeys.com, which today redirects into a Mattel support search.

Players found out the way people usually did. A fan blog called Mattel customer service in February 2011, got told the server had been gone about a month, and published the company line: as of January 2011 the online features of the U.B. Funkeys world were no longer being supported. A petition asking for the servers back went around and did nothing.

What survives is the unusual part. The offline game still loads on an old Windows machine, and the figures still announce themselves to the Hub, because the recognition never needed a network. A toys-to-life product normally turns into a shelf of dead plastic the moment the servers stop. This one kept most of its single-player world and lost the half with other people in it.

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