Tamagotchi (Japanese: たまごっち, IPA: [tamaɡotꜜtɕi], "Egg Watch") is a brand of handheld digital pets that was created in Japan by Akihiro Yokoi of WiZ and Aki Maita of Bandai.

[1] It was released by Bandai on November 23, 1996 in Japan and in the United States on May 1, 1997,[2][3] quickly becoming one of the biggest toy fads of the late 1990s and the early 2000s.

According to Bandai, the name is a portmanteau combining the two Japanese words tamago (たまご), which means "egg", and uotchi (ウオッチ) "watch".

Most Tamagotchi characters' names end in tchi or chi (ち) in Japanese, with few exceptions.

They both won the 1997 Ig Nobel Prize for economics, dubbing them the father and mother of Tamagotchi.

The characters were first drawn in heta-uma which was a popular style found in teen magazines then converted to pixel art.

[6] The characters are colorful creatures with simple designs based on animals, objects, or people.

When releasing the Tamagotchi in Japan, Bandai initially marketed them exclusively to teenage girls.

[11] Bandai and WiZ would later create a masculine counterpart to the Tamagotchi, the Digital Monster, which would spawn the Digimon franchise.

Filling up the Hunger meter can be achieved by feeding the pet a meal (usually a loaf of bread or hamburger) or a snack (usually a piece of candy or cake).

The Japanese Tamagotchi toys usually feature a ghost and headstone when the pet dies, but English language versions have been changed to show an angel at death.

[14] Using infrared communication, two players can link their toys and the pets may form friendships, play games, exchange gifts, and even marry.

The Japanese Keitai Kaitsuu Tamagotchi Plus was the first model to feature support for an online app.

Since then, many subsequent models have also been able to interact with apps like Tamatown by using alphanumeric codes generated by the toy to log into the website's Flash game.

The Mesutchi and Osutchi Tamagotchis were the first to introduce marriages and offspring, and the feature returned in the Plus/Connection and subsequent models.

Since the parent will automatically guide the baby's life, the only care it needs from the player is medicine in the case of sickness.

After 24 hours has passed or the offspring evolves into a child the parent will leave, and the player is left to care for a new generation.

The Chou Jinsei Enjoy Tamagotchi also introduced the idea of character "families" or "groups."

These "families" are a kind of classification for characters obtainable in the game, grouped mainly by appearance, though they are also associated with certain skills.

With the many different versions of the toy, there are other less common mechanics that influence the pet's growth, including but not limited to friendship with the player, varying types of skills, and career.

The Chou Jinsei Enjoy Tamagotchi also introduced Skills, which can be built by playing certain games with the pet, or using certain toys or foods bought from the E-Tamago or in-game shops.

[citation needed] An arcade machine known as TamaStation is available in Japan from which players can win prizes for their Tamagotchi toy.

[citation needed] On June 5, 2007, it was announced by Reuters that an animated Tamagotchi film was to be released in December 2007.

[25] On May 31, 2008, North American distributor Bandai Entertainment announced they had acquired the rights to the film.

In the 2022 film Turning Red, which was set in 2002, the main protagonist Meilin "Mei" Lee owns a Tamagotchi that she names "Robaire Junior", after one of the members of her favorite band.

Yume Kira Dream, into "webisodes" promoting the then-latest addition to the franchise outside Japan, Tamagotchi Friends.

[citation needed] When we were stuck on talk of the spectacular 3D graphics of Mario 64 and racing games, we saw a huge hit in the form of Tamagotchi — a tiny key chain boasting pictures made up of no more than 10 or 20 dots.

The success of the Tamagotchi led to the electronic pet being appointed the Christmas Gift of the Year by the Swedish Retail Institute in November 1997.

Teachers expressed concerns over class disruption as well as general distraction from schoolwork and this eventually led many schools to ban the product.

[34][11] Children became emotional over the deaths of their Tamagotchi, leading to teenagers sending them to graveyards for burial and urban legends of teen suicide, such as an alleged case of a teenage girl hanging herself over the death of her Tamagotchi after her parents took it away as a punishment.