A couple of decades ago, schoolchildren didn’t have smartphones or Nintendo Switch consoles to keep them busy.
Instead, they had small electronic pets called Tamagotchis that became one of the biggest crazes of the 90s.
Now, a quarter of a century later, the company behind the little electronic toys has announced a new model – based on a popular Star Wars character.
R2-D2, the beloved droid from the sci-fi franchise, will launch as a Tamagotchi toy on November 11. It comes in two different colours: white with blue stylings like the famous droid itself or a translucent blue with white stylings.
They both look pretty good to us.
Like the original toys, the pocketable R2-D2 exists on a 24×30 pixel LCD screen above three physical buttons.
The tiny droid can be trained in 19 different skills, and will need looking after through cleaning it and charging it to keep it happy.
There are nine different mini games to play as well, including Dejarik ‘holochess’.
Considering that Tamagotchi pets pretty much disappeared with Y2K, it’s not immediately clear why Disney (which owns Star Wars) and Bandai (which owns Tamagotchi) decided to release it.
Still, the official Tamagotchi Amazon page (yes, that’s a thing) in the US has it listed as available to pre-order now.
Unfortunately, when Metro.co.uk clicked through to try and get our hands on one we were met with a dreaded ‘currently unavailable’ message. So it’s possible the droid we’re looking for may not see a UK release.
Which is probably just as well – we never managed to keep them alive longer than a week anyway.
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