Tamagotchi Mon Amour

Every once and a while I lift my head out of the deep, dark, pebbly sands of fringe-technology geekiness to see a piece of pop culture jetsam washing ashore. This is how I encountered the Tamagotchi.

Somebody mentioned it on a talk show somewhere. There was a joke about it on some morning radio show. I read a newspaper column about it. Like most pop culture, it's hard for me to pinpoint exactly where I first encountered the Tamagotchi. I knew that it's a digital pet for kids. The kids have to hatch it, feed it, play with it, discipline it, give it medicine and eventually bury it. It would die just like a real pet although Bandai, the Japanese manufacturer, "softened the blow" for the U.S. market by saying that the pet would return to its home planet.

Occasionally, technology nods its head to kids with a really odd and amazing toy. I remember the Fisher Price PXL 2000 video camera. It would record sound and pixilated black and white video on an audio cassette. What an amazing and empowering toy, I thought. I had always wanted to make movies as a kid, but the cost was prohibitive. The PXL 2000 was only about $100. The public didn't latch on to it, though. When I heard that they were being discontinued I had to drive to a Greensboro Toys `R' Us to buy one of the last ones available in Eastern North Carolina. I made some great little videos with it. It ate batteries like crazy and a 90 minute audio cassette would only last around four minutes. I duct-taped the PXL camera to a radio controlled buggy and got some great footage until the buggy flipped. My camera never quite worked the same after that spill. Even though Fisher Price no longer makes the camera, PXL 2000s are actively being bought and sold via the Internet (although I wouldn't pay more than $200 for a working one). Filmmakers Craig Baldwin ("Sonic Outlaws") and Richard Linklater ("Slacker") have incorporated PXL 2000-shot footage in their films and PXL 2000 film festivals now dot the country.

Another kid-marketed technology marvel appeared last year when Casio introduced a personal electronic diary/memo device for grade school-aged girls. Not only would these brightly colored little pieces of plastic keep addresses and phone numbers of friends, owners could "pass notes" across a classroom to other girls with the device via infrared and let the device do "match making" with various classmates. Imagine writing a note concerning if the girl in the front row stuffs her bra and sending it at the speed of light to your best friend (who was moved all the way to other end of the class because you two were talking too much) using technology your fifth grade teacher couldn't begin to understand. This was a milestone in the Information Age. Alas this magic electronic diary did not do well in the American market (I would blame poor marketing and a thirty to fifty dollar price tag) and it disappeared from the shelves before I had a chance to buy one.

So when a Family Dollar in Charlotte advertised Tamagotchis for $14.99 I quickly snapped one up. A clearance sale at Family Dollar is usually a death knell of a product. I was afraid that the Tamagotchi would flop given America's current desperate need to fill their lives with bean bag animals with birthdays and limited production runs. ("Of course this beanbag tiger is a valuable collector's items. They only made 100,000 of them!")

I waited until I got home before I hatched my first Tamagotchi (or as digital pet enthusiasts call them, the Tam). All I had to do was pull this little piece of paper out of the egg, allowing contact with the battery. Immediately, I remembered the complex procedure I had to perform with another pet I had when I was young_Sea Monkeys. I had two or three little packets to add to this little fishbowl of water in a certain order. Eventually_a week later_I would see little organisms swimming around the bowl. With the Tam, I immediately saw a pulsing speckled egg with the promise of a hatching in five minutes.

Five minutes gave me enough time to review the instruction sheet that came with the Tam. Actually the description on the box couldn't have been clearer:

Tamagotchi is a tiny pet from cyberspace who needs your love to survive and grow. If you take good care of your Tamagotchi pet, it will slowly grow bigger, healthier, and more beautiful every day. But if you neglect your little cyber creature, your Tamagotchi may grow up to be mean or ugly. How old will your Tamagotchi be when it returns to its home planet? What kind of virtual caretaker will you be?

Using three little buttons on the egg, you feed the Tam a meal or a snack, turn off the light on the LCD so the Tam can sleep, play with it, give it medicine, flush away its poop, discipline it, and check its health and happiness status. It would beep if it needed to be fed or if it wanted to play. Playing with it would involve guessing if it would turn left or right. You'd get five chances and if you guess correctly three or more times, the Tam would be happy.

After it hatched, I began to question my reasoning for buying this device. I don't have any real pets because I don't want the responsibility. And yet, here was this little plastic egg demanding my constant attention. It would beep every ten minutes or so. Either it was hungry or it wanted to be played with or it had just pooped. All this from just a plastic watch! In fact, Tamagotchi is Japanese for "egg watch." One of the three buttons on the egg will show you the time when you press it, but timekeeping seemed secondary to demanding attention for this creature that bounced around on the little LCD screen.

Besides being a great device for kids to learn about caring for pets/babies, the Tam seems to be a primer for electronic appliance slavery — a society that answers to the beeps of alarm clocks, cellular phones and, of course, beepers. The Tam would wake me up demanding to be fed or played with. My daily routine now included the Tam. Throughout the day I would look down to the Tam. Had it pooped? Oh no, there's a little skull next to it! It's very sick requiring shots of medicine. Sometimes the Tam would beep for no reason at all. The instructions informed that I should discipline it if this happens. I really doted over that damn thing for days.

Unfortunately, when it turned ten years old (each day is a year to a Tam), I found myself too busy at a conference to give it my full attention. I keep it fed but I couldn't play with it as much as I should have. It fell asleep in its own poop. I couldn't wake it. I couldn't clean up the poop. The instruction manual told this was very bad for its health. I actually felt guilty.

The next day, after the Tam awoke, I quickly cleaned up the poop and became extra attentive to its needs. I had to return to the conference that day, but I checked the Tam regularly. It was a long day and I frequently checked the Tam just to see the time. Then it happened... The little LCD was filled with twinkling stars and my Tam creature was smiling with little wings and a halo. The instructions said that my Tam had returned to its home planet, but I knew this was skirting around the bleak reality — the damn thing had died. I was in shock. Here I was, a semi-responsible person who actively took time to care for this pet and it was dead.

It was somewhat of a relief though. I didn't have to care for it anymore. I would hatch a new egg later when I returned from the conference and had more time to care for it. Unfortunately, a friend accidentally hatched a new Tam. I couldn't go through the anguish of raising another one. I decided to kill it as quickly as possible.

It took two days of no feeding, no playing and no medicating to kill the Tam. This amazed me because just one day of less than perfect treatment killed my previous Tam. Even though I mistreated this Tam, I still couldn't ignore it. I keep checking to see if it had died. Every time it beeped for attention, I would feel a little twinge of guilt. After it died I felt pretty cold-blooded, but once again, I was relieved.

I carried around the dead Tam for awhile to show friends with whom I had shared my previous Tam's life. While it is dead, you can't check the time. It only shows you the angel and how old it was when it has died cinching my theory that while a Tam is a watch it isn't really a watch.

My third Tam hatching was another accident. I was reaching for something in a cabinet and hit the reset button. I vowed to care for this Tam more than ever before.

I thought I was doing okay raising this one until I visited one of the many websites devoted to Tams (http://www.tamagotchi.co.uk/innews.htm). This particular site showed the life cycle of the Tam chart. It was here that I discovered that the type of Tam I got was determined by how I cared for it. My first Tam was a Masktchi which had received borderline good care and was in average health. The chart showed me that a Tam couldn't die its first year which explained why it took me so long to kill my second Tam. Then I received a devastating blow, my third and current Tam, aTarakotchi, was very low on the health and care totem — almost at the bottom. How much care did this damn thing need!?! I guess only kids with absolutely nothing else going on in their lives could maintain a perfectly healthy and happy Tam.

I was so frustrated and disillusioned that I really felt relief when a couple of days later, I looked down to my Tam (which was chained like a pocket watch to my shorts) and found just a dangling chain. Where did it go? I checked my car. I looked around the parking lot I was walking in. It was gone. Had it run away? Would I have to put up flyers? "Lost Tamagotchi, Pink Plastic Egg, 9 years old, Last seen chained to my shorts."

Later that day, I did find the Tam wedged underneath a seat belt unit in my car. Of course, it was dead again. I'm not sure if I'll hatch a new one.

Use a Tamagotchi to Balance Your Checkbook? You Will.

Of course, I was wrong about the Tamagotchi failing in the American marketplace. I tried to help a friend buy some Tams for her young relatives and found most places sold out of all the digital pets_Tamagotchis and the numerous imitators. A Toys-R-Us clerk told us, "It's going to be the next `Tickle Me Elmo.'"

Tam enthusiasts have quickly established several web sites filled with Bandai press releases, rumors and user-created Tam "movies." What follows are some Tamagotchi items that are sure to be a part of your future:

Angel Tams: A Tam that never dies because it's already dead.

Tamagotchi Game Boy cartridge: You can raise up to three Tams at the same time. The only difference allows you to pause the Tam for later play, making it more of a game than a whining pet.

Tamapittchi: A cellular telephone that contains a Tam. Currently only available in Japan but I see this being extremely popular when kids are allowed to carry cell phones.

Digi-Demon: The next big thing in Tam technology. Digi-Demons allow you to raise a monster that can fight another Digi-Demon when they are hooked together. The loser can be seriously injured or killed. At last, technology has spawned a virtual cockfight. I remember the intense competition the boys had in grade school with pencil fights and then tug-of-war duels between little transfer truck toys. The Digi-Demon will do really, really well as a class disrupter for boys (already, schools are banning digital pets). I have Japanese contacts scouring the country to procur me a couple of these for my Tam Digi-Demon army. No one is safe...

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