Is Hasbro's (HAS) new Furby the cutest thing ever or a harbinger of the apocalypse? Depends on whom you ask.

According to Gizmodo, which tested the $60 toy debuting next month, the new Furby is grotesque and horrible. "If you're not 5 years old and dumb, exposure to the Furby is about as bad as smallpox spores," Gizmodo's Sam Biddle writes."The gimmick quickly wears off, and it's then a constant, gnawing source of aggravation. It's like a device designed specifically to annoy."

But Biddle concedes that children "will probably love this more than any toy they've ever owned."

Hasbro is clearly hoping for a repeat of 1998, when Furby mania dominated the holiday season. Parents lined up at toy stores, desperate to nab the robotic fur ball. Classified newspaper ads offered them for hundreds of dollars.

The new Furby still looks like a bug-eyed, big-eared gremlin but with noticeable upgrades and a several high-tech enhancements (see this video for more). The biggest change is the glowing LCD eyes. It also works with translator apps that can tell you what those squawks and whistles really mean.

Hasbro needs a success with Furby 2.0 after its big gamble this year on the movie "Battleship." The adaptation of the company's long-running game was trashed by critics and unable to compete with "The Avengers," leading to disappointing box-office results for Hasbro and Universal Pictures.

Will Furby 2.0 become the king of the holiday season? The new version seems to have all the ingredients for success -- though its $60 price tag is definitely a deterrent in this economy.

Like it or not, this is the future of toys, Biddle writes. "The mushy minds of an entire generation will love this thing, and everything like it, until we're all just playing with holograms and battling our siblings with lethal lasers in front of Grandma," he adds.

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