![]() This is why it was named “Tamagotchi,” a wordplay between the Japanese word たまご (tamago), which means egg, and ウォッチ (uotchi), the equivalent of the English word, watch. In Yokoi’s first sketch, the toy was wrapped around a user’s wrist, like a watch. Made of an LCD screen embedded in a brightly-colored, egg-shaped plastic case, the hand-held toy first became a sensation with Japanese children, before becoming popular in the US in 1997, and then spreading worldwide. Only a handful of product stories are as interesting and peculiar as this keychain-sized toy’s, which launched officially on November 23, 1996. A short time later, with crucial help from Bandai’s developer, Aki Maita, Tamagotchi was born. It was while watching this commercial that businessman Akihiro Yokoi had an idea: “wouldn’t it be nice if children could bring their pets with them, wherever they went?”įast forward a few months, Yokoi is pitching his former employer, Bandai Corporation, an idea that would revolutionize the toy industry: A portable, digital pet that people could nurture, play with, and dote over. When his mom finds out, she scolds the boy. In the ad, a boy wants to bring his pet turtle along on a family trip, so he hides it in a suitcase. The first seed came from a Japanese TV commercial. ![]()
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