You will, I assume, have heard about this unusual craze which has recently been exported from Japan (a country, you will recal, which is usually noted for the over-zealous way it's citizens swarm to purchase new-but-useless pieces of electronic equipment).

Fig. 1 - This is a Tamagotchi, and this is, I'm afraid, as exciting as they get.

"So what is a Tamagotchi, then?" The uninitiated will be asking. It's marketed as an "electronic pet", but isn't anywhere near as exciting as that sounds. Anyone with visions of K-9 from the old Doctor Who programmes will be disappointed, as these things are just a plastic shell with three buttons, which allow you to scroll through the seven different things that you can do with your pet. Imagine - A pet that you can only do seven things to. And that includes cleaning up its crap. (Admittedly that's more than you can do with, for example, a tank of stick insects, but it's still hardly Roffo the Wonder Dog, is it?)

This is the main problem with Tamagotchi (except for being tediously dull, yet strangely addictive) - the lack of concistency with regards to it's intellegence. At the age of 1 a Tamagotchi learns to switch the light back on once it wakes from a nap, but even at 29 it hasn't learn to switch it out before it goes to bed. When they are 40 they still haven't learnt how to clean up after themselves once they've been to the toilet, yet from newborn they can count from one to nine. Weird.

Fig. 2 - Some more Tamagotchis. They never seem to do a great deal, do they?

24 / 12 / 99 - Tamagotchis, despite being mere siicon and plastic, appear to have had offspring, every bit as crap as themselves. The names of these electronic beasts? Furbies. I was tempted to making a page for them all by themselves, until I realised their evil parentage, and decided that they would be better placed here. Still, as Darwin predicted, the next generation have evolved, since now the repugnant toys can talk. Thankfully, this has benefitted society, since they have been banned from most workplaces due to their habit of learning company secrets and then broadcasting them at inopportune moments. Furbies. Eurgh.

		Maintained by Tony Gowland Last updated: 24/12/99