Here's one of the warmest things Bandai has done all anniversary year, and it's finally on its way west. The Tamagotchi nano colorful: Mametchi Memories — a pocket-size tribute to the franchise's most famous face — is coming to North America and Australia in November, a window the US team confirmed at New York Comic Con earlier this month. Western fans met the device back in July, when it was teased at San Diego Comic-Con's "30 Years of Tamagotchi!" panel as part of the anniversary lineup.
The timing is the point. The real anniversary lands on November 23 — the day the original Tamagotchi went on sale in Japan in 1996 — so Mametchi Memories arrives just in time for the week that matters most.
The concept is a greatest-hits album on a keychain. You start with a first-generation Babytchi, raise it into Mametchi, and then keep caring for him as he cycles through the versions of himself from across three decades of devices. It is the rare Tamagotchi whose entire character roster is one character: the shell shifts between historical Mametchi designs, the backgrounds match the era, and the mini-games change with him. More than 20 of them nod to specific hardware, from the 1996 original and Chou Jinsei Enjoi! Tamagotchi Plus through the color-screen iD L and the modern Uni.
Care stays resolutely old school: meals and snacks, cleaning up droppings, not letting him sulk. Other characters drop by to play at different times of day, and if you raise Mametchi well to the very end, a special scene and a message from him are waiting. Early owner reports say the letter he leaves decodes to something like "I'll always love you."
Hardware-wise, this is the "nano colorful" treatment rather than the basic nano: a 128x128 full-color LCD, a rechargeable lithium-ion battery charged over USB, and a shell about four centimeters tall that clips to a bag like every nano before it. Two anniversary colorways are on offer — the translucent 30th Yellow and the light 30th Blue — and in Japan the price is 6,600 yen (around $43).
Demand has been its own story. Pre-orders opened on Premium Bandai on April 15 and sold out quickly enough that Bandai came back with a second production run, with the extra batch due in December. Japanese owners have had their devices since August, and Australian retailers are already listing both colors for November.
There's also a quiet piece of history here. Since the nano colorful line began in 2024 with Detective Conan, and continued with Hololive and Blue Lock, every model has been a collaboration. Mametchi Memories is the first with no licensed partner at all: an anniversary device that celebrates Tamagotchi itself rather than something attached to it.
If you have raised a Mametchi — and 30 years of Tamagotchi owners mostly have — this is the release this season that feels least like merchandise and most like a letter. For once, the birthday gift is the character, not the collaboration. Hardware-wise, this is the "nano colorful" treatment rather than the basic nano: a 128x128 full-color LCD, a rechargeable lithium-ion battery charged over USB, and a shell about four centimeters tall that clips to a bag like every nano before it. Two anniversary colorways are on offer — the translucent 30th Yellow and the light 30th Blue — and in Japan the price is 6,600 yen (around $43). Both shells run the same software, so the choice is pure color preference. Demand has been its own story. The first reservation window on Premium Bandai opened on April 15 and closed just a day later; the fast sellout led Bandai to schedule a second production run, with the extra batch due in December. Japanese owners have had their devices since August, and Australian retailers are already listing both colors for November.