Bandai Opens Pre-Orders For Its Tiny Tamagotchi Rings

It has been 30 years since the first-ever Tamagotchi was released. The cyber pets took the world by storm in the late 1990s, and to celebrate the iconic toy’s 30th anniversary, Bandai has revealed its smallest Tamagotchi ever. One so small that it has been turned into a ring you can wear on your finger.

First reported by Famitsu, pre-orders for Bandai’s Tamagotchi Ring are already open, with the tiny device priced at 7,700 yen, so a little less than $50. The new Tamagotchi is 28mm, which is only a little more than an inch long, which makes it almost half the size of the original Tamagotchis on chains originally released in 1996.

The rings are even smaller than the first Tamagotchis to include color LCDs in 2008. Those upgraded devices had to be bigger to accommodate their alkaline batteries. The goal of the Tamagotchi Ring was not only to create something special to commemorate the toy’s 30th birthday, but to get the tech that was required for the devices in 2008 to fit inside a much smaller package.

Mission accomplished, and Bandai did that by using fewer parts than ever in the new Tamagotchi designs. The rings include fewer parts than any LCD Tamagotchi device ever created. All of that packed into a toy small enough that you can wear it on your finger, and there are 30 characters to choose from on the new devices, all pulled from throughout Tamagotchi’s history.

Mametchi and Kuchipatchi, characters that we were first tasked with taking care of on our original Tamagotchis 30 years ago, are back and far more colorful than they were on the much more basic devices back then. Even though the LCD screen on the Tamagotchi Ring is only 0.56 inches wide, the original characters have never been this detailed.

The Tamagotchi Ring is available in three color options: pink and pearl white, black and metallic silver, and blue and metallic gold. While they are exclusively being released in Japan, that doesn’t mean you won’t be able to get your hands on them elsewhere. Meccha Japan, a retailer that specializes in selling and shipping Japanese products worldwide, already has all three models available.

Due to buying through a third party, and that third party having to ship the products from Japan, it does mean the Tamagotchi Ring costs quite a bit more than if you were to buy it directly from Bandai in Japan. Roughly $30 more. It’s a pretty special release, particularly for Tamagotchi fans who, like me, can still remember just how obsessed we all were with them when they first released three decades ago.

سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://www.thegamer.com/where-buy-tamagotchi-rings/