Tamagotchi (Japanese: たまごっち; IPA: [tamaɡotꜜtɕi], "Egg Watch") is a brand of handheld digital pets marketed since 1996 by Japanese toymaker Bandai, a division of Bandai Namco Holdings. Most Tamagotchi are housed in a small egg-shaped handheld video game with an interface consisting of three buttons, with the goal of raising the pet as it goes through different life stages. The original Tamagotchi, released locally in 1996 and worldwide in 1997, quickly became a major global toy fad for a period of time. Tamagotchi was brought back in 2004 and since then has received more new versions while Bandai has also expanded the franchise to other media and merchandise. As of 2025, over 98 million units have been sold worldwide. It has been a staple children's toy in Japan since its early years. 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". After the original English spelling of watch, the name is sometimes romanized as Tamagotch without the "i" in Japan. Most Tamagotchi characters' names end in tchi or chi (ち) in Japanese, with few exceptions. "Mametchi", present since the original release, became a mascot of sorts for the series.
History
Tamagotchi was created in Japan by Akihiro Yokoi of WiZ and Aki Maita of Bandai. They both won the tongue-in-cheek 1997 Ig Nobel Prize for economics, dubbing them the father and mother of Tamagotchi. The first Tamagotchi was released by Bandai on November 23, 1996 (several months after the release of the unsuccessful Apple Pippin console) in Japan. It would then release in the United States on May 1, 1997. Tamagotchi is a keychain-sized virtual pet simulation game. The characters were first drawn in heta-uma, which was a popular style found in teen magazines, and were then converted to pixel art. They were worn like a wristwatch in the initial concept, hence the portmanteau name. The egg shape might have been chosen as reptiles like snakes were popular pets at that time. 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. Bandai and WiZ would later create a masculine counterpart to the Tamagotchi, the Digital Monster, which would spawn the Digimon franchise. The original Tamagotchi sold about 40 million units worldwide during its run, including about 12 million in the US and Canada. The large success of the toy was a surprise for Bandai. But the company was also ill-prepared as it struggled to keep up with demand. At one point, Bandai employees were banned from carrying bags showing the Bandai logo in fear of theft as it was a sought after item. The Tamagotchi craze faded by 1998 and because of large overproduction of the toys that remained unsold (partly caused by miscommunication and that customers made reservations at multiple different retailers), Bandai made a 6 billion yen financial loss. Bandai revived the Tamagotchi toys in 2004 with the Tamagotchi Connection, a new Tamagotchi with the ability to connect and interact with other Tamagotchi using infrared. In a bid to avoid repeating the mistakes of the original, the company released the new Tamagotchi carefully with subdued advertising. The new generation Tamagotchi became a popular toy in Japan and other regions in the mid-2000s. The brand's revival and popularity was further seen with the success of the Tamagotchi-based Nintendo DS video game Tamagotchi Connection: Corner Shop which sold 1 million copies in Japan by January 2006. Bandai updated the Connection series with new models for several years and have since then expanded the Tamagotchi with further new versions with additional features to this day. (V1-V6)
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