1998 Furby Motor / Gears Seizing (?) after jump, anybody know a fix?

Hey! I recently purchased a NIB 1998 Snow Leopard Furby (WT code), which did not work out of the box. I anticipated a relatively simple jumpstart (the typical methods of whacking the battery compartment or skinning it & spinning the black horizontal gear with a screwdriver, if the first thing didn't work). While spinning the gear did eventually wake it up, it seems like something's causing either the gears or the motor to get stuck at random, particularly when it's flipped upside down. I dabbed a very small amount of 3-in-1 all-temp silicone lubricant (which shouldn't damage the plastic) on the teeth of the gears (not the shafts, since one of the very few sources I could find said not to do this) with a cotton swab, and that didn't seem to have an effect on the seizing (though I'm not sure if I used enough). I noticed when I was initially spinning the gear, it would catch and become hard to spin for a moment, then return to normal once slightly adjusted. Could the issue be that one of the gears is defective, is the motor the problem, or could it be something like a corroded wire / some other kind of disconnect? I know these guys are prone to motor issues, especially after being dormant for as long as this one, but to me it sounds like that's working fine (everything else functions as intended when it's not frozen). I took care not to deform or otherwise damage the gear, so I don't think that could have caused it. I couldn't find this issue talked about anywhere, and I'm not very familiar with Furbys or small hardware as a whole, so I figured I'd give iFixit a shot. Any advice is appreciated! :]

Here's a video with an example of the sound it makes when it gets stuck:

I don't let it do this for longer than about 20 seconds at a time, for fear of it overheating; nothing stops it except for removing the batteries.