Perfect Polly, just like a real bird! Just like a real friend!

April 30, 2015 11:24 AM

Real animals have wants and needs -- this chattering hunk of plastic is WAY better! Tired of having to feed and care for a bird? STOP RIGHT THERE, this late-night commercial has you covered -- Perfect Polly will be your plastic pal who's fun to be with! And if the ad is accurate, it's got Never Shuts Up Action until you turn it off! It can sit on your finger! It can even confuse a real bird! (via, of all places, The Dissolve)
posted by Rev. Syung Myung Me (35 comments total)

Look Tyrell had to start somewhere.
posted by The Whelk at 11:27 AM on April 30, 2015 [11 favorites]

Perfect Polly will be your plastic pal who's fun to be with!

Share and Enjoy!
posted by Greg_Ace at 11:28 AM on April 30, 2015 [9 favorites]

Share and En -rawwwk!
Sh -awk! (whistle)
Sh -awk! (whistle)
Sh -awk! (whistle)
Sh -awk! (whistle)
posted by Greg_Ace at 11:30 AM on April 30, 2015 [2 favorites]

Are mid-western white people the only target demographic? There are a lot of other races and persons of colour who stay up late and make poor decisions based on lack of sleep and too much work. Sounds like a missed opportunity to me.
posted by Fizz at 11:32 AM on April 30, 2015 [7 favorites]

They got the idea from Hans Christian Andersen. Also, if you are too refined to buy this middlebrow/lowbrow version, try this page.
posted by kozad at 11:35 AM on April 30, 2015

The horror.

The horror.
posted by adamrice at 11:38 AM on April 30, 2015 [1 favorite]

This kind of predatory marketing--to people with lobotomies or suffering from oxygen deprivation--should be regulated.
posted by General Tonic at 11:42 AM on April 30, 2015 [4 favorites]

I was just complaining that the only problem with pets is that they're alive.* This product is designed for me! From DoesItReallyWork: "There’s no good explanation given as to why you’d want a second bird. If they are near each other they might be able to trigger each other with their head movement and tail feather shaking so that they never stop chirping." This is just like real budgies! They totally do this! And a budgie should always have a buddy!

* Just took one of our four budgies to the vet for mystery problem involving wasting and paralyzed feet.
posted by zennie at 11:42 AM on April 30, 2015 [4 favorites]

It won't be a convincing as a real budgie until they design one that's constantly trying to peck to death the other bird that lives inside the mirror.
posted by Atom Eyes at 11:42 AM on April 30, 2015 [5 favorites]

It can even confuse a real bird!

Yeah, I mean, my budgie - and I say this with love - spent like a decade head over heels in love with a toy made out of brightly-colored interlocking plastic rings. I'm not sure this is an especially high bar to clear.
posted by brennen at 11:45 AM on April 30, 2015 [34 favorites]

Forged by Hephaestus! Sent by Athena to aid Perseus in his quest to save the princess Andromeda!
posted by prize bull octorok at 11:47 AM on April 30, 2015 [14 favorites]

Summon the meteors.
posted by Behemoth at 11:47 AM on April 30, 2015

Yeah, I mean, my budgie - and I say this with love - spent like a decade head over heels in love with a toy made out of brightly-colored interlocking plastic rings.

A previous comment I made about parakeets is germane to this discussion
posted by prize bull octorok at 11:50 AM on April 30, 2015 [3 favorites]

Did they really need to put the off switch in the junkular region?
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 11:54 AM on April 30, 2015 [2 favorites]

My grandfather and his wife have a plastic bluebird that sings when someone passes close enough to the shelf. They love it. It has a name. I . . . don't understand.
posted by Countess Elena at 11:56 AM on April 30, 2015

A perfect compliment to anyone's Big Mouth Billy Bass! Buy two and get the next one at half-price! That's right! We're all about the bass! The Big Mouth Billy Bass! Buy two and get the next one at half-price! Void where prohibited by law or good taste. Some assembly required. Employees and their families not eligible for this offer. Do not taunt the animals. Dilute! Dilute!
posted by octobersurprise at 11:57 AM on April 30, 2015 [3 favorites]

OK, now look, Does It Really Work people: that is not a "real review", nor is it a "hands on video review and demo".
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 11:58 AM on April 30, 2015

You don't want to get an electric parakeet, they're too obvious. People come over and see the squalor you're living in and see you've got an exotic pet and they're going to talk. The talk isn't going to be about how you totally have a real and expensive pet. They've checked their copy of Sidney's Catalog and they've seen how you live and it doesn't add up any other way. If you really can't get a real animal and must get an electric one, go with something mundane and believable, like a goat. Or a sheep.
posted by ckape at 11:58 AM on April 30, 2015 [9 favorites]

Actually, now that I think about it, I should get this for my parents to give to their sun conure. He violently hates everything and would have a great time destroying it.
posted by Countess Elena at 11:59 AM on April 30, 2015 [4 favorites]

Do Androids Dream of Electric Peeps?
posted by Atom Eyes at 12:11 PM on April 30, 2015 [7 favorites]

We laughed at the time, but they were wildly popular for a while. As with any trendy pet, eventually people tired of their artificial parakeets and released them into the wild, forgetting that the Perfect Polly had no indigenous predators. Soon enough, flocks of feral Perfect Pollies were infesting attics and belfries, nesting in poplars and oaks, and showering parked vehicles with light sprinkings of plastic pellets and springs. Native birds were forced out of their habitat; squirrels choked to death on the colorful but inedible droppings. Something had to be done.

In retrospect, the development of the terrifying Optimal Eagle was probably a misstep...
posted by phooky at 12:32 PM on April 30, 2015 [20 favorites]

Did they really need to put the off switch in the junkular region?

That's where my off switch is.


Also my on switch.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 12:52 PM on April 30, 2015 [5 favorites]

I kept expecting the ad to take a dark Too Many Cooks-esque turn.
posted by Metroid Baby at 12:58 PM on April 30, 2015 [6 favorites]

Someone gave my daughter some Digibirds for her birthday last year, and they're cute, but when they sing all together, it's a little creepy.
posted by mogget at 1:07 PM on April 30, 2015 [5 favorites]

Ok, total aside, does anyone else think that "Welcome To Me" movie reviewed on The Dissolve sounds like it could be fantastic?
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 1:09 PM on April 30, 2015

I wish they had spent the R&D money used on this forwarding advancement to the commercialization of sex robots.

Unless this floats your boat, in which case, BEST DAY EVER.
posted by Keith Talent at 1:17 PM on April 30, 2015

Countess Elena: "Actually, now that I think about it, I should get this for my parents to give to their sun conure. He violently hates everything and would have a great time destroying it."

Yeah my cockatoo would shred this in seconds. Heh. Shredded tweet.
posted by Splunge at 2:06 PM on April 30, 2015 [1 favorite]

These make EXCELLENT Yankee Swap Christmas gifts, though. People fight over them. Because it's either these or something even more useless/less fun.
posted by emjaybee at 2:21 PM on April 30, 2015 [3 favorites]

Be careful when visiting the Perfect Polly website - the ads follow you everywhere for weeks!

Having said that, I have one from when they were known as Breezy Singers. Drove the real budgies nuts!

But I am glad Perfect Polly exists. Like Squawkers Macaw, it's the only pet bird some people should own.
posted by Calzephyr at 2:43 PM on April 30, 2015 [1 favorite]

So today I learned that cats are liquid and birds are (or should be) plastic. Thanks, MetaFilter.
posted by oneswellfoop at 2:54 PM on April 30, 2015

My mom has one of these--my sister got it for her for Christmas a few years back. My mom loves electronic pets/robots/toys. She commandeered my childhood Furby and bought him a friend, even. Funny thing is, she doesn't really ever seem to understand how to care for robopets. I had her watch my tamagotchi in middle school when I went to camp and it just starved to death.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 3:17 PM on April 30, 2015 [3 favorites]

just took one of our four budgies to the vet

arg, yea, I took my tiel in to the vet today; it's so harrowing taking tiny bird in - they're so small! getting wrapped into towels and poked at! poor little things.

doesn't excuse this plastic travesty, though.
posted by 5_13_23_42_69_666 at 10:26 PM on April 30, 2015

come here PP, there's plenty of room in my nightmares for you
posted by angrycat at 4:27 AM on May 1, 2015

We had one of those toy parrots that repeats things years ago. It was pretty annoying.
posted by atoxyl at 1:18 PM on May 1, 2015

I bought one of these to annoy my catz. Set it up on it's little perchy thing right by the food bowl. My cats are grazers who nibble about 100 times a day. The pp is, indeed, motion activated. It lasted about 3 hours before I had to kill it.
posted by puddinghead at 4:44 PM on May 1, 2015