TAMAGOTCHI

I used to have a Tamagotchi original. When it first happened it was annoying going off every three seconds. The more it goes up the more you can leave it alone. I think I ended up taking out the batteries. I don’t play with it anymore.

—David

You could say that it all started with an egg. Okay, that’s not quite true, but it sounds good. The first digital pets were called tamagotchi. You say it like this: TAM-AHHH-GOT-CHI. The name is Japanese and means “lovable egg.” They were called “lovable eggs” because they were small, about the size of an egg and kind of shaped like an egg, only flatter.

According to the story, the Tamagotchi was invented when the designer saw a kids’ cartoon about a young boy who wanted to take his pet turtle to school but couldn’t. This lead him to think that it would be nice to have a pet you could take everywhere with you. And that’s how they say Tamagotchis were born.

Anyway, the first time these eggs went on sale was in 1996 in Japan. Kids in Japan loved them. And when the eggs became available in the U.S., kids here loved them, too. These were the first “digital pets.” If you compare them to Pokémon, they are pretty easy. There really wasn’t a game that came with them. The whole idea was to keep them alive by feeding them, giving them medicine when they were sick and putting them to sleep when they were tired. And every once in awhile they would beep when they needed something.

The eggs then became available in the U.S. in 1997. And guess what? Yep, American kids—boys and girls—liked them just as much as Japanese kids. As a matter of fact, it was reported one store sold out of 10,000 of the little critters in one day.

The first ones were made by a company called Bandai (the word Bandai, by the way, is Japanese for the word “forever”) Toys—the same folks who make Mighty Morphin Power Rangers and Digimon and a bunch of other stuff. However, after the first original Tamagotchis came out, a lot of other companies started making them, too.

These were very simple toys. They were small enough to fit in your pocket and had a tiny LCD screen like with your Game Boy, only smaller. I’m not sure why they were so popular, but they were. Even adults bought them.

I even bought one. Yes, I admit it. I bought a Tamagotchi and carried it around for a couple of weeks. And then it became annoying. I mean it was really annoying. Finally I did the unthinkable—I ignored it. Not only did I ignore it, but I put it in the bottom of my underwear drawer to ignore it. Say what you will about Tamagotchis, they did not die quietly. Brave little critters, they went out beeping. My own personal Tamagotchi went out beeping under a pile of underwear …

The original Tamagotchis looked like, well, chickens. After all, you did “raise” them from an egg. However, after the fad caught on, other “virtual pets” started showing up in toy stores. The best one, I think, was Giga Pet, that had a large choice of different kinds of animals, like a cat and dinosaur.

Digital pets are still around, sort of. I saw one recently that was a mermaid and another that was a dinosaur-creature-thing. These were different from the original toys because they did different things. They were more like little video games, where the character did tricks or you could teach it things. I can’t say for certain, but I think that they will always be around from now on.

Tamagotchis were really, really successful in Japan. A lot of kids really, really liked them. So, the next thing was a sequel, right? Okay, so the game they brought out next you’ve probably never seen because it wasn’t sold in the U.S.

Called “Angel’s Tamagotchi,” kids had to raise a ghost that turned into an angel if they took care of it the right way. However, if they didn’t take care of their ghost, then it turned into a devil. Japanese kids loved that game, too. But nobody was really sure if American kids and their parents would like it, so it was never sold in the U.S.