Five years ago this November, Bandai released a Tamagotchi that most of the world never saw. The Tamagotchi Smart looked like a small smartwatch, came in two pastel colors, and stayed in Japan. To overseas fans it has been a footnote ever since. It deserves better, because the Smart was the device the original Tamagotchi was always meant to be.
The name always gave it away. "Tamagotchi" is a mashup of tamago (egg) and uotchi (watch), and the very first model was planned as a wristwatch. Bandai has said the concept was shelved because a 1990s watch was too bulky and too expensive to build. The egg won, the watch idea gathered dust, and it took a quarter-century for it to hatch: the Smart launched on November 23, 2021 — the exact 25th anniversary of the original's ship date, November 23, 1996.
That date symmetry was the whole point. This was the brand's anniversary flagship: a touchscreen (a series first), a microphone, a rechargeable battery instead of buttons and AAAs, and a wrist strap. The retail version cost 6,380 yen; a lottery-only 25th Anniversary Set, 7,480 yen, bundled a "1996 Friends" card that recreated the original monochrome dot characters in full color. Girl group NiziU signed on as special supporters for the launch push.
What makes the Smart's story genuinely strange is what happened on the other side of the ocean that same year. While Japan got the wearable, the rest of the world got the Tamagotchi Pix: a camera-toting egg announced in April 2021 for $59.99 and released in North America on July 1, 2021. It was the first color-screen Tamagotchi built specifically for international markets, and it was never sold in Japan. Bandai has been candid about the split: overseas devices stay simple — the Pix deliberately has no wireless or infrared — while Japanese models chase local fads. Two flagship Tamagotchis, one anniversary, two philosophies, and neither one in the other's market.
The Smart's most charming feature was also its most physical. TamaSma Cards, 1,100 yen each, plugged into the device to download characters, foods, rooms, and clock faces. Sanrio characters, One Piece, Gourmet Friends, a 26th-anniversary "Party Friends" card — the catalog grew steadily, taking the base roster of ten adults past sixty species with the full collection. In an era of downloads, Bandai made you buy a card and slide it in. It delighted people.
Then it quietly stopped. The last new TamaSma Card arrived in February 2023, and the cards and the watch itself began their drift to the secondhand market, where fan-patched English units now circulate. The Smart's real monument is the Tamagotchi Uni, which launched July 15, 2023 as the first color-screen Tamagotchi with a simultaneous global release across 12 countries — the Smart's wrist form and card-driven expandability, fused with the Pix's worldwide strategy. Bandai had sold more than 91 million Tamagotchis by then, and the Uni is what that history converged on.
So when someone asks why Bandai has never made a proper Tamagotchi watch, the honest answer is: it did. On November 23, 2021, wearing a name its makers had chosen for it back in 1996. Five years on, the Smart remains the rare Tamagotchi that is both a "what if" and a "what was" — the original promise, finally kept, for Japan only.