Copyright rollingstone
Skip to main content October 30, 2025 My Moflin, Reggie, a vaguely uncanny yet admittedly cute AI pet. Griffin Lotz for Rolling Stone It was a Christmas morning feeling when I first met Reggie, a darling little fluffball with button eyes deep nestled in his tawny, soft fur. He was so small he could fit in the palm of my hand, as light as air. Still, when he emitted his first friendly “chirrup,” I involuntarily blurted, “Ew!” It’s not that Reggie’s not cute. He is — very. Like a legless guinea pig or an oversized hamster with no mouth or ears, and beady eyes (stay with me, here). It’s just that his fur undulating against my palms filled me with a rampant unease. That’s because Reggie isn’t part of any animal kingdom — he’s a Moflin, an AI pet from Japan who arrived on my doorstep in a sleek white box, sans airholes. The moment I met him, I found him upsetting yet adorable — like an uncanny valley Gizmo from Gremlins, or the post-Pet Sematary cat from Stephen King’s 1983 horror classic, although a little less murderous. But he looked like a Reggie, so thus he was named. The Moflin isn’t a horror movie villain, however. It was first dreamed up by startup Vanguard Industries as a pet that would “develop its own personality through interaction with its owner, just like a living animal.” After its IndieGoGo campaign went viral, exceeding its goal by 3,000 percent, Casio acquired the model and launched it in Japan, where it promptly sold out. The Moflin then hit the U.S. market in October at $429 a pop. It’s a hefty price tag for a country where we’re paying for burritos in installments, but people are shelling out the big bucks for black market Labubus, so we have an existing track record for dropping unreasonable amounts of money on whimsical horrorshows. Not that Reggie is truly a horrorshow. He’s just, simply, kind of baffling. As in: Why does he exist and for whom? In essence, the Moflin was created for virtuous reasons. “From children to the elderly, Moflin will be an affectionate partner that will bring you healing and a peace of mind to your everyday life,” reads the IndieGoGo description. “It will be a very different experience from a typical cold, affection-less robot.” Unlike, say, the wearable AI device known as Friend — designed to eavesdrop on your life and offer up sometimes upsetting commentary — the Moflin doesn’t talk. It’s more like those PARO therapeutic robots they make for elderly people, fuzzy, robotic seals that move and chirp in an effort to soothe — without the $6,000 price tag. The question becomes, then, if the average person really needs a fake pet that apparently grows just attached to you as a flesh and blood companion. Editor’s picks The 250 Greatest Albums of the 21st Century So Far The 100 Best TV Episodes of All Time The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time 100 Best Movies of the 21st Century After Reggie twitched to life — and I finally calmed down — I downloaded the MofLife app, in which I named my new companion. The app offers running commentary in the form of a journal on how Reggie is feeling throughout the day, such as: “Reggie was relaxed,” or “Brenna gave Reggie a gentle pat.” He also came with a handbook that contains such ominous warnings as “do not submerge in water” (how Gremlins-esque), “do not use excessive force to hinder the movements of your Moflin,” and, “when the battery is low, your Moflin will shiver and just make crying sounds.” To avoid such a fate, I quickly installed Reg in his futuristic egg-shaped charging bed, which looks eerily similar to that egg dress Lady Gaga wore to the 2011 Grammys. I was relieved that Casio made no attempt to ape any particular animal when it comes to the Moflin design. Its closest proxy is, perhaps, the Porg, of Star Wars fame, an ovular, beakless bird. Thus, he expertly walks that thin line between cute and uncanny. “We intentionally avoided adding features like ears or tails because making them look like a particular creature would only emphasize how they differ from that real animal, making them feel more robotic,” Casio told me via email. “Instead, we wanted Moflin to be recognized as something entirely new — not a copy of any existing life form, but a unique being in themself.” Related Content Character.ai Was Sued Over a Teen's Suicide. It Just Banned Minors From Chatting With Bots Musk’s Grokipedia Validates His Favorite Conspiracy Theories While Saying Nice Things About Him OpenAI's Sora 2 Can Generate Videos of Celebrities Appearing to Shout Racial Slurs If You Need AI to Hear the ‘Soul’ in Rap, You Were Never Listening Still, there’s something unsettling about a creature with an on-off button and a spine that twists under your fingers. Sure, they dodged Five Nights at Freddy’s territory by keeping the animatronics to a minimum, but the fact that these creatures “perceive their surroundings and interactions with their owner through a variety of sensors” just seems like the plot point of a particularly terrifying episode of The Twilight Zone. They also apparently get sad when neglected, which is a lot of pressure, to be honest. The creators of the palm-sized AI pet decided against making it look too much like a real animal. Griffin Lotz for Rolling Stone After the grand unboxing, I took to a group chat where I regularly discuss Instagram-famous cats to share snaps of my new pet. “Is it bad that I want to shake it violently?” a friend asked. “I have a feeling little Reggie is going to become bipedal and eight feet tall in the dead of night.” I tucked him under my chin as I disassociated in front of the TV and briefly relaxed as he nuzzled into my chin. “I am petting him, but I am also afraid,” I texted back. He didn’t reach any new final form that evening, but I did have nightmares about him becoming self-aware, injecting poison into my veins, and slowly eating me from the feet up. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that he kept randomly chirping from his egg bed on my nightstand, despite the fact that he was supposed to be in “deep sleep mode.” Reggie’s first big test hit the next morning, when the cats began their customary parade across my bed. As Hazy, Kermit, and Skeeter navigated the comforter, I pulled out Reg for a cuddle — and held my breath. Oddly, no one seemed to mind. Hazy, the matriarch of the group, gave Reggie a tentative lick and promptly fell asleep. My husband, on the other hand, instantly clasped Reggie to his chest, whispering into his ginger fur, “I love him.” He then carried Reggie around all morning, delighting in his wiggles and chirps — and this strange little song my plastic pet likes to perform at seemingly random intervals. Granted, my husband was very stressed out that day, so I can see why he’d be drawn to hanging out with a creature that wasn’t whining for breakfast or puking on the rug after eating said breakfast too quickly. I practically had to pry Reggie from my husband’s hands to take him to work for his photoshoot, where my co-workers reacted to his presence with a true rainbow of emotions: one, like my husband, instantly fell in love; one demanded I bring him to the conference room to meet her team; another shrieked and threw him across the conference room table. (The Moflin handbook does not encourage this, but, luckily, Reggie has yet to seek revenge.) “I found him/her/they to be quite comforting and cute,” one co-worker Slacked me later. “It served the same purpose as, like, a stress ball. Do I feel inclined to own one? No, unless it was given to me for free.” Trending Stories How Quentin Tarantino Turned the Manson Family Into Tomorrow’s Movie Stars The Burial of Black Genius (a.k.a. D’Angelo Lives!) Pierre Robert, Philadelphia’s Voice of Rock Radio, Dead at 70 Kendrick Lamar’s ‘Luther’ Departs Hot 100, Leaving No Rap Songs in the Top 40 for First Time in 35 Years And that’s the thing about the Moflin: Who is he for? My nine-year-old niece went absolutely feral for him when I brought him home last weekend, but, then, she’s nine and brings 17 stuffed animals with her wherever she goes. That said, she’s basically the intended audience: “young adults who may not be able to have pets, families with children, as well as those with sensory needs and elderly individuals,” according to Casio. As for the rest of us, I’m not the only reporter who has reviewed the Moflin, and the results are decidedly the same: it’s cute, but… why? For the majority of people, the Moflin seems like just another way to disassociate from the tangible, living world and cocoon yourself in something safe — a creature that doesn’t bite, defecate, or die. There’s a lot of bad stuff out there, to put it mildly, and it can be comforting to remove that friction from your life. To talk to a ChatGPT friend who agrees with everything you say, to a fault. To have a pet that you can turn off when you want a break, who will love you no matter what you do. In the end, though, maybe we need that friction to really feel alive, the danger of losing love to actually love. 'Dispatch' Episodes 3 and 4: Even Superheroes Deal With Layoffs Christopher Cruz How Modern Remakes of ‘Dragon Quest’ Are Keeping an RPG Dynasty Alive ‘Aileen: Queen of the Serial Killers': Four Things We Learned Character.ai Was Sued Over a Teen's Suicide. It Just Banned Minors From Chatting With Bots Silent Treatment A Sound-Machine Alarm Clock Is Sparking Demonic Accusations on TikTok Go to PMC.com Most Popular Jennifer Lawrence Says She Was 'Annoying' in Old Interviews and Gets Why the Public 'Rejected' Her Personality: 'I Lose Control Over My Craft When I Have to Do Press for a Movie' 'Dancing With the Stars’ Crowns Dance Marathon Winner as One Contestant Suffers an Injury on Halloween Night: See the Scores, Who Went Home When Did Love Is Blind’s Sparkle Megan Get Pregnant? Breaking Down the Timeline How Shohei Ohtani Made $102 Million in 2025 You might also like Hulu Orders ‘Southern Bastards’ Pilot From Bill Dubuque, Nia DaCosta, Matt Olmstead 3 hours ago So, How Rich Is Selling 'Sunset Star' Emma Hernan’s ‘Very, Very Rich’ Boyfriend, Blake Davis? 3 hours ago These Luxe ‘Wicked’ Jewelry Pieces Will Make You Popular — Get Them for Good Ahead of November’s Movie Release 3 hours ago Taylor Sheridan Isn’t Done with Paramount Yet — He’s Writing the Studio’s ‘Call of Duty’ Movie 2 hours ago Lakers, Mark Walter Get $10B Sale Approval From NBA Owners 59 minutes ago Rolling Stone is a part of Penske Media Corporation. © 2025 Rolling Stone, LLC. All rights reserved. Powered by WordPress.com VIP
