Tamagotchi Turns 30 With a Times Square Takeover After Winning a Prize for Wasting Our Time
Bandai is planning a free November gathering for the pocket pets that made feeding pixels feel like an appointment.
A Tamagotchi can demand attention from a pocket. For its thirtieth birthday, Bandai is giving it Times Square. Apparently the little egg has outgrown its shell.
The official plan puts the Duffy Square pop-up on November 22, from 9 AM to 7 PM Eastern, with the big-screen show running from 7 to 7 PM. Both are listed as free. The brand’s Japanese launch anniversary falls on November 23; when those screens light up in New York, Japan will already be on the birthday date.
Bandai’s announcement says the brand has shipped more than 100 million devices worldwide. That’s a company shipment figure across the brand’s history. It doesn’t tell us how many tiny pets anyone managed to keep alive. Let’s avoid asking for that audit.
The official event page promises chances to try Tamagotchi Paradise and devices from the series’ past, alongside character appearances. I’d be more interested in comparing how the toys ask for attention than comparing the size of the screens. The relationship between a beep and the person who feels obliged to answer it is where the awkwardly familiar part begins.
The people giving out the Ig Nobels noticed the time commitment early. The prize organizers’ own account names Akihiro Yokoi and Aki Maita as the 1997 economics recipients, crediting them for diverting work hours into tending virtual pets. This was an Ig Nobel, the intentionally funny prize. Stockholm did not issue an urgent request to clean up pixel poop.
I love the tension in that award. Looking after a virtual pet can be a silly waste of time and an activity somebody enjoys. Plenty of perfectly respectable hobbies survive that description. The interesting design question is when a person chooses to check in and when the product makes stepping away feel like letting somebody down.
I’d compare that feeling with an app’s notifications before dismissing the egg as a quaint toy. Does the alert tell me something I need, or manufacture a task so I’ll come back? Am I glad I answered? Those are useful questions even when the thing making demands has a calendar icon instead of a face.
My bet is that affection will keep this particular gadget alive longer than any claim about its specifications. A pet gives you a reason to remember the interaction. The marketing department can buy bigger screens; it still needs people to care about what appears on them.
Bandai says the event can change, and crowding may require entry tickets. The egg has a door policy.