Tamagotchi did what?!

Tamagotchi was also something I really wanted to have as a kid and since I was nagging my family to have a pet, they thought of giving me a tamagotchi. Like 4 years too late, cause once I got it I wasn't able to really feel much for my electronic pet, with time it got even more bizzare – i got a new tamagotchi with a... boy to take care of. More than anything it made me giggle at age 12.

But what was tamagotchi really about? Lets rewind for those who did not have the tiny electronic pet experience: Tamagotchi was invented by Aki Maita in 1996, released by Bandai (Japanese toy maker) on November 23, 1996 in Japan and introduced to the rest of the world on May 1, 1997.
To summerize the toy I'd quote Wikipedia: „Tamagotchi is a keychain-sized virtual pet simulation game.“

You could take care - by feeding, cleaning after them, playing with them and even help them heal from a sickness- of animals, objects or people and the style of it was rather simplistic.
As it happend with many other toys, there few generations of tamagotchi released, which means that some of them required more interaction from their users.

Didn't plan to talk about death in this difficult time, but I discovered a very interesting perspective that tamagotchi has proposed is the topic of getting attached and losing your pet. The mechanism is simple: you put a lot of effort into treating your pet, you responde to it's beeps and toot's, you check up on it regularly and perhaps that's the only „living“ being that you take care of to that extent. Of course, you might get attached. But no matter how much effort you put the pet has a limited life cycle and you'll have to face the final day. At least you gave it a good life, right? Well, the other side of that grief is when you haven't. And that perhaps was the toughest lesson for a kid to see that it might have played a role in the tamagotchi's quick good-bye.