As a little side project following up to Easter weekend I'm going to discuss some anime toys. Today's subject will discuss Virtual Pets with the next few episodes discussing Card Games, Models, Classic Toys and ending the week with Mini cars followed by a review of Dash Yonkuro.
So let's begin.
Raising a Japanese Alien Blob
The Tamagotchi craze began in 1996 invented by Aki Maita. The design being an egg shaped electronic toy smaller than a pager. The concept has always been the same, an alien drops an egg onto Earth and you have to raise it to adulthood through a number of tasks such as feeding, exercise, studying, playing, cleaning poop, pretty much anything you would do with an infant. How your Tamagotchi looks all depends on how well you raise them, although judging by the basic shapes of these creatures, there was alot of limits in what you can get.
I had a Black Tamagotchi myself.
Tamagotchi is still around but it doesn't pull as bigger sale as it used to, even with the advances in technology, but most point to what happened the following year and our next entry as the beginning of the end.
The Birth of Pokemon's most worthy Rival
A year on from the Tamagotchi craze came Digimon. While the concept was pretty much the same, the difference came in the fact that you could battle each other by connecting two together, also the smarter use of pixels meant more unique creatures could be produced on screen. The first generation Digimon only used the Agumon line along with a few select creatures from the early series with future models sporting more characters using all the Digi Destined monsters, this would continue through much of the anime seasons that followed.
I owned an original Digimon and a first gen Digivice.
Most people would know that the anime far outlived the original toy.
Your Very Own Super Fighting Robot
A brief mention on this, during the run of Megaman NT Warrior they actually made the Net Navi device used by the characters along with the battlechips used to power them up. It didn't sell as well as the video game but did okay enough but it was partially inspired the next innovation.
Raising Bugs and Dinosaurs with Cards
Sega took the idea further with Mushiking which takes everything learned from the early days of virtual pets and combining it with trading cards of insects, this would also lead to the later Dinosaur King which uses Dinosaurs instead. It had a fair go at it but it's what this turned into that still exists today.
Raising a Kawaii Pop Idol by Collecting Cute Outfits
Sega clicked further with the idea of cards with Hime Otogi Lilpri which led to the creation of franchises such as Aikatsu, Pretty Rhythm and PriPara. It was the most natural transition of the idol franchise who had struggled to claim back it's popularity following a slump in the 90s and 00s. In these games you collect and match cute outfits for your idol to wear. This is still going on today with no signs of stopping.
We started with Alien Blobs now were at Kawaii Pop Idols going through Monsters, Robots, Insects and Dinosaurs along the way.
