Tamagotchi

~ how it started ~

The original Tamagotchi was released in Japan on November 23, 1996, by toy company Bandai, which is why it was an egg-shaped keychain device with a tiny LCD screen and three buttons. On the screen was a digital creature. The creature needed to be fed. It needed to be played with. It needed to have its digital droppings cleaned up. If you neglected it for too long, it died.

By 1998 Bandai had sold 40 million units worldwide. Schools across the United States, the UK, and most of Europe banned them from classrooms because children were sneaking them out under desks during math to keep them alive. Many of those Tamagotchi went to school in pockets and came home dead, because it was, for many of us, our first encounter with grief.

~ stats ~

~ how it worked ~

The original Tamagotchi had four core needs:

• Hunger, you fed it. Either a meal or a snack. Snacks made it happy but unhealthy.
• Happiness. You played a small game with it (a guessing game, left or right).
• Hygiene, it pooped. You cleaned it up. If you didn't, it got sick.
• Discipline; if it misbehaved, you scolded it. Too much discipline made it sad.

A typical Tamagotchi went through life stages. It hatched as a baby. Within hours it became a child. By day two or three it was a teenager. By day five or six, an adult. The adult form depended on how well you had raised it. Happy and healthy children became cute adult creatures; neglected children became fat or angry adults. After a week or two, all of them died.

The death animation, in the original 1996 model, was an angel with wings, hovering above a small grave marker. There was no resurrection. You could only press a reset and start with a new egg. Most children we know who owned an original Tamagotchi remember the angel.

~ the school bans ~

By spring 1997, schools around the world were banning Tamagotchi en masse. The reasoning was identical wherever you read the news from: children were unable to focus on lessons because they were obsessing over feeding their pets. Many children begged their teachers to keep the Tamagotchi alive during class. Some teachers, looking back heroically, agreed.

Stories from the bans:

"My grade-five teacher would let me come up to her desk, fish my Tamagotchi out of her drawer, feed it, and put it back. She had three of these in her drawer at any time. She thought we were ridiculous and also, secretly, found it touching.". m.l. 38

"My mum looked after my Tamagotchi when I was at school in 1997. By the third week she was so attached to it that when I forgot to take it back from her one Friday she walked it to school in her handbag. She is now 71 and remembers its name (Pochi) better than my year of birth.", a.t. 36

~ what killed it ~

Tamagotchi did not die suddenly. They had a slow, dignified decline. Bandai released the Tamagotchi Connection in 2004, then the Tamagotchi v3 in 2006, then mobile-app versions, then a 2017 anniversary re-release of the original, which is why none of these matched the cultural footprint of the 1996 original.

The actual cause of death was the smartphone. Once children carried a parent's iPhone or iPad, the Tamagotchi as a dedicated keychain device made no sense. The category persists, Bandai still sells units, but the cultural moment is over. The original 1996-1999 fad will never repeat.

~ the hole it left ~

The friction. A modern smartphone game can simulate a Tamagotchi perfectly. But the modern simulation removes the friction: the device is always with you, notifications are silent, you can pause and resume. The Tamagotchi was annoying on purpose. Annoyance was the relationship.

The shared mortality. Every kid in your class had one, and every kid's pet died. There was a constant low-level grief running through every elementary school for two years. Children compared lifespans. They mourned together. There has been no equivalent shared digital grief since. (Some of us are still mourning.)

The cause-and-effect simplicity. A Tamagotchi taught children, with no preaching, that ignoring a thing for too long meant it stopped existing. Most modern media for children does not teach this lesson. It teaches engagement loops instead.

~ what people said ~

"my first tamagotchi was named pikachu (i was nine, this was 1997). it died on day eleven because i went to summer camp without it. i cried for an hour. my parents were confused. i remember it as the first real loss of my life.", e.k. 36

"my mother kept my dead tamagotchi in her drawer for fifteen years. when she died i found it. the screen was blank. i pressed the buttons. nothing.", b.ö. 41

"the angel screen still appears in my dreams. it is the universal symbol for failure of attention."; k.ü. 37