It’s been a busy and successful week for Sanrio’s Hello Kitty property, as the company followed up on its partnership with Mattel’s Barbie, announcing a collaboration with the popular Tamagotchi ‘virtual pet’ game.
Tamagotchi was introduced to the world as a virtual pet, housed in a tiny digital device, first released in Japan in 1996 and internationally in 1997. The little egg-shaped device became hugely popular through the late 1990s and 2000s, and by 2017 Bandai had sold 82 million units. A little known fact is that co-creator and inventor Aki Maita won the 1997 Nobel Prize for Economics for the creation of Tamagotchi.
Tamagotchi gameplay centres on the natural, human desire to care for others, and particularly children. Marketed initially to teenaged girls, Tamagotchi are a small alien species that deposited an egg on Earth. The player is in charge of hatching the egg and raising it to become an adult Tamagotchi. The better the care, the better the result for the adult Tamagotchi which, in later iterations of the game, can have its own babies.
Hello Kitty enters the Tamagotchi world as a playable character. “It’s everything that is familiar to people who have played with Bandai’s virtual pet gadgets, but with the added cuteness of Hello Kitty,” says Bandai UK.
There are seven adult characters and how each user rears their pet will determine which adult they end up with. For particularly good parenting skills, users could even be rewarded with one of the surprise characters.
Hello Kitty Tamagotchi features two fun mini games – Piano Game and Balloon Game – as an added bonus and is suitable for kids aged eight and upwards.
“Tamagotchi has been an incredible brand for Bandai for over two decades and we’ve had many collaborations within that time period,” said Brand manager, Priya Jadeja. “Like Tamagotchi, Hello Kitty is a universally loved brand and we can’t wait to see the fan’s reactions.”