vpet-encyclopedia - Tumblr blog

[vpet-encyclopedia]

Y'all I started this blog and then my life exploded a little and I haven't had much time for it </3 I will be back i promise LMAO!!

In the meantime pls feel free to make submissions 👀

[vpet-encyclopedia]

VPet Profile: Giga Pets

Giga Pets are arguably the most popular non-bandai vpet! they were originally designed by inventors at REHCO LLC in 1995, then pitched to toy manufacturer Tiger Electronics, who began distributing the toys in 1997. Tiger Electronics was bought out by Hasbro in 1998, who continued selling Giga Pets in stores until the brands discontinuation in 2006.

The Giga Pets line was continually added to while it was active including two new lines called Giga Pets Plus and Giga Fighters as well as a plug-and-play tv console called Giga Pets Explorer! 

In 2018 the original creators at REHCO LLC formed the toy manufacturing company Top Secret Toys and relaunched the Giga Pets brand with all new models! How exciting!

More information about the original 1997 Giga Pets under the cut!

Giga pets gained a lot of popularity on their release because they were reportedly more readily available in the US than tamagotchi. They feature an overall similar setup as the original tama release with a pixelated, single color LCD screen with no backlight. They had 4 buttons labeled “left” “right” “mode” and “enter”. Pets had to be fed, played with, bathed, and napped 3 times a day.

[image of the Digital Doggie in its original packaging from Now And Then Collectibles]

The original 3 pets released were the Digital Doggie, Compu Kitty, and Micro Chimp. (those are such good names, I love them)

[image of the Compu Kitty pet from Worth Point]

[image of the micro chimp from an ebay listing, hosted on picclick]

I think its interesting how they all have different shaped shells and buttons! That seems like a really smart marketing and design choice to increase collectability! 

Giga Pets added at least 20 unique devices to their line by the end of 1997! These included brand tie-ins with Jurassic Park, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, and Disney. 4 of those were also new versions of the Doggie and Kitty pets available exclusively at KFC (reportedly sold for a special price of 7.99 with meal purchase)

[image of 2 out of the 4 KFC giga pets, called MicroPup and DigiPooch, from Worth Point]

That’s it for my basic overview of the original 1997 Giga Pets! If you have any corrections or additional information you’d like to share, please let me know! My main source for this post was the Giga Pets wikipedia page, which was very helpful. I think this will probably be the only brand that i’ll have a wikipedia page to look at unfortunately, considering that Giga Pets is one of the most popular classic vpets and even their page is pretty short and lacking in sources.

Anyway, there’s a lot more to cover in the history of Giga Pets, and once I’ve written about them I’ll link that here! Thank you so much for reading!

[vpet-encyclopedia]

hey welcome

ok this is the start of a new effort to provide resources for vpet collectors to learn about all the cool vpets out there-- old and new --because it seems like there isnt a good centralized source that catalogues all kinds of vpets. a lot of more niche ones get left behind (especially in international/non-japanese communities) which is so sad becasue there’s so much cool stuff out there besides tamagotchi and digimon!! 

At the beginning i’m going to start mostly by posting basic intros to vpets that follow the tamagotchi format-- i.e. specialized handheld devices with a screen that displays a pet. but hopefully i can expand to stuff like browser/app based pets and physical “pet simulation” toys in the future!

if this is a project youre interested in and would like to contribute to-- please reach out to me!!! submit your favorite unpopular vpet so i can post about them! if you have resources or recommendations for where to buy vpets, send me an ask about it!! Message me if youd potentially be interested in becoming a permanent or long-term contributor/moderator for this project! im just one guy and i could really use your help to make this a success.