10: This Is Your Slime

What's good, internet? It is August 5th, 2025, and this is not a collectible, pocket-sized world of cute little guys. It's Side Story, a podcast about games and the stories we tell about them presented by Friends at the Table and supported by our patrons. That could be you at friendsofthetable.cash. welcoming me back that's not how that goes i am welcoming back join me in welcoming back

Thank you. Welcome back, Austin. Thank you. All right, Allie and Janine. How y'all doing? How's this beautiful Sunday afternoon for you? It's going. Yeah, it's... I... recently did a big garden project and now it's like kind of done and in the stage where the people who are good at it are gone and it's just me

so that's what i've been up to they should put they should make that sort of farming sim where it's like you know you get the little push from bringing in the people who are good at it and then it's like all right Try to maintain it. Good luck. It's ironic because it's my favorite part of the farming sim is when you get the shitty farm full of garbage and you have to fix it.

And once it's like good, that's when I kind of lose interest. Because I'm not really good at it. I don't find as much joy in taking care of things as I do usually in like... polishing a dirty thing or something like that, you know? Right. This is the thing that always sticks in my head from when I worked at Giant Bomb. Vinny used to always say that he liked to build the machine, but once it worked...

he lost his interest in it a little bit. Yeah. I relate to that so much. Yeah. That was both for games like Factorio, but also like building a production studio, you know, plumbing. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Once it works, like I, who cares? At least with plumbing, like. Yeah, that's good. You make it work and then you leave it alone. Guy who makes new plumbing fixtures his hobby is a wild one. Bluff City character for sure. There's someone who does that. Oh, for sure.

Allie, have you added a new garden to your life in any sort of way recently? No, I actually tried to walk to the local plant store that I like going to, and they were closed, even though they were open on Sundays.

What's going on? Is it close to the season? A Sunday betrayal. I think, I don't know, maybe it's a slow season and it's hot out, so the woman who runs it doesn't want to be there on Sundays. I don't blame her for that. um she really loves her store she like won't let me leave without a plant without like seeing me touch the leaves and explaining to me like this is how it should feel when you water it and this is how you should feel when you don't water it so she can

she could go by whatever schedule she wants to go by. Wow, I would love something in my life like that. Speaking of little gardens that we keep. I'm tending. And tending. And tending. I think the tending is really the key. I was trying to build that segue for you. And then you pivoted to little gardens. And I was like, okay. They're not exactly gardens. But I think gardens. I had a moment today. I was walking down the street.

on the way, in fact, to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. And I said, you know, this whole area is kind of a garden. Like, a city is a type of garden. You know, once you get rid of the idea that a garden is an unstructured natural space, which is like one of the first things they teach you about. like the history of gardens if you study gardens at all like in high school um and you understand that they're like produced spaces suddenly a city could be a garden too you know so uh

Yeah, absolutely. And so, Ali, when you messaged us a couple of days ago, can I just read you the two messages that you sent? This is like 1am, by the way. Was it what it may have must have been when I am? This is, this was, I'm going to make sure I get both of these right. Cause there's two of them at different times of day. Yeah, this was, it was 1252 AM. He said no one, there was no conversation happening.

The last thing that happened was seven hours ago in this channel. And maybe days. Actually, yeah, it was seven hours previous. I appreciate it. I appreciate it. I do. You said. I want to talk about Tamagotchi Paradise and La Boo Boo on Side Story. And I said, lol, okay, give me more. We need to record this for next week, this weekend or Monday. And you said...

I need to get a Paradise. So this will be a few weeks off. It wasn't. Listener, it wasn't. It was today. But the train of thought was Tamagachi Paradise, Virtual Pets' Fashion Accessories slash Bag Charm. Blind boxes and the bizarre gamification of chance of chance via Pop Mart's in-app hints system. And I said, okay, yes, this makes perfect sense. And then Dre asked a question that I didn't know, which was, are Labubu's blind boxes? And you said, yes. And then Dre said, like...

Ooh, like 12 O's in a row. And that's where I'll stop reading our internal chat. Yeah. So yeah, bring us on a journey. Also, I have to say for the listener.

Janine and I are being given a gift right now, which is we have a live video feed of two different Tamagotchis in front of Ali on a different camera. Yeah, I... I have a Tamagotchi and a Tamagotchi Uni here, and we're going to talk about them and the differences between the devices and the, uh, like... recent release of the paradise which happened like a couple days ago a couple weeks ago depending on the the place you're in and yeah i i have been kind of taken by a spirit

um i i i'll talk about my onboarding process yeah for virtual pets and how i kind of got pulled into the hobby here um and then we're going to talk about it

brief history of Tamagotchi in general, just so we can get on the same page. I would love that. Because I'm, you know, I think many of our listeners are probably like me, which is, oh yeah, Tamagotchi's, those existed when I was 10, 30 years ago.

And they were kind of big for a minute. And then they disappeared. And then I think a lot of our listeners are like, oh, yeah, I heard about those. Because I was a fetus when they were popular. That's right. My parents got one before they decided to have me.

Right. And then they were really relieved that I didn't shit everywhere as much. I was not like that. And then a different subset, I think probably a smaller subset are saying, oh, yeah, I've also been following this. So for those first two groups, I would.

love i would love to to after you give us your journey your onboarding yeah yeah yeah so i yeah i am in your similar boat where my memory of tamagotchi is i had when i was a kid and it was okay i think it was blue i wasn't really like i i have not been a lifelong fan of tamagotchi i think like my memorable childhood virtual pet experiences were more in the Sonic Adventure Chow Garden, Pokemon, obviously. Having that and then like the VMU was, you know, that was a sort of...

what's the opposite of a precursor? Right, a follow-on. A follow-on. You know, you get that because of Tamagotchi and its ilk. Yeah, I mean, the whole VMU. feels like a response to Tamagotchi blowing up four years previously or three years previously or whatever. The VMU was the Dreamcast, the special Dreamcast memory card that you put into your controller that had a little LCD screen like one of these Tamagotchis, which, by the way, if you don't know what a Tamagotchi is,

is ali can you just explain highest of high levels what these are yeah highest of high levels is that the tamagotchi is a egg-shaped keychain uh the original generation was about an inch and a half tall with a black and white lcd screen with three buttons beneath it um i let me just get into the history because we're kind of there it's a pun it's a japanese pun Tamago egg and Tamadachi's friend. My egg friend. Many such cases.

So it was originally released by Bandai in 1996. The basic gameplay loop for virtual pet is to care for a creature from its birth to its eventual passing on by feeding it. Cleaning its habitat and playing mini games to keep it in a good mood. Semicolon. Game day decisions, gameplay decisions and RNG will affect the type of adult pet that you get. So it encourages multiple runs of the...

device to unlock the different designs, basically. Digimon was also one of these, right? At the time. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, the Digimon Digi... Digivice, Digidevice, or whatever. Yeah, those little guys. Like, for me, the virtual pet that I... really remember being attached to and putting um like effort into raising was the pikachu one which was a tie-in to i believe pokemon yellow and it was like a basic pedometer where you were like

charging pikachu sparks and i don't even know if it had like an in-game tie-in with like an infrared or something i don't even know if we were there yet but it was just like a pikachu device for people who like pikachu who's me I want to say that the step part I vaguely remember thinking that the step part you could like

transfer it to your Pikachu for XP or something, but I might be wrong. The technology was definitely in a different state back then. Yeah. So like with the development of Tamagotchi over time, you would get gameplay advancements like being able to buy accessories and furniture for your pets or communication between devices.

or spaces set up in retail spaces that would give you special gifts, or you would be able to have your Tamagotchi meet someone and breed. And then eventually some devices would have gene mixing. offspring eggs would inherit the traits of their parents oh i want the wings from this one but the little funny face from this other one

Yeah, so for the Paradise specifically, that is a device that is actually bringing back that mechanic that hasn't been in one since the early 2000s. I think it was an unlocalized device called the...

Tamagotchi mix or the Tamagotchi mix party would have that sort of you link two parents up and then the genes would continue on. I just found a picture of this happening that I'm going to put in the side story chat. Please, I'll put these in the show notes. It kind of shocked me a little bit because I've...

seen ones that have the little infrared things on top but it looked like a remote control where you just like point them at each other this one this one something about this really i don't know um i know oh yeah that's the paradise they're like locked they're like they're in they're it is very interesting and it's like like i the paradise is such a weird device to me and the thought that they went back to something like this

that is like the only other time they used uh like a feature like this is like in one of the like very first generation Tamagotchis, they released like gendered versions with the assumptions that couples or a pair of friends would get like a...

pink and a blue version and they would literally do that and link them up whereas like you know you go into the early 2000s and they have infrared connections or they switch to nfts they don't literally physically connect i know what you mean yeah yeah yeah i see So they didn't drop connectivity, but they did move away from this literal physical interlocking.

thing which is special that that means that that experience i'm i am such a big believer in the way you touch a game like changes how the game feels i think i've talked a lot about how important it was that when i was playing netrunner for the first time and i learned

you could reach across the table and take a card from someone else, like from their deck or their hand or their discard pile that like changed how I thought about games. So I think the difference between... infrared you know placing two devices on the on the your high school desk or whatever and like making them face each other in their ir connects is way different than i'm gonna put my tamagotchi interlinked with yours so that our little guys you know

get an egg that's that's different it's really weird and the the like the the part of why i think the paradise is interesting in it being in this sort of time in bandai's history that they're doing this is because Bandai has already been able to make a reinvestment in retail spaces because they're producing a bunch of card games that they're running tournaments from. They're selling merchandise or doing Gashapon in Bandai Cross stores.

Did you go to the Bandai store for this in New York? Is that where you picked yours up? I literally did. Yeah, yeah. Actually, so I bought these Friday because that was the technical release date of the Paradise and the like... The online release was kind of worked with this in a weird way. Yeah, extremely. I see. So it technically released in other regions on the 12th.

But for America, it was a little bit delayed. And people kind of think that that's because of tariff reasons. And then on the actual release date... Also was true here, though, so... Yeah. But, like, on the release date, like, people were calling... like barnes and noble and game stops to uh employees who are like we don't even have this in our system to um like amazon sort of getting like

really weird pockets of like just a couple of devices and then you know the bandai ad being replaced with scalpers and saying that it's a hundred dollars the way that amazon works i see right So the like fandom word right now is that like traditional retail spaces should be getting these in like October. But I've been in a really unique position because I have the Bandai store near me. Right.

has the well it has like every generation that is available right now sort of in stock so they've been doing the uh tamagotchi original which is reproductions of the like first generation tamagotchi the tamagotchi nano which is both physical smaller design and a simpler game designed because they're all licensed properties I feel like I see the R2-D2 one of these literally everywhere. How do you not have an R2-D2 one of these, Allie? You're the biggest R2-D2 head I know.

I feel like I've even linked that one at some point when I saw it like a couple years ago to be like, look, it's that guy. I know. Yeah. But the one. Star Wars. The Star Wars. Yeah. I think they just for Star Wars Celebration. they released a special Darth Vader one. That's so wild. We can't have... You can do whatever you want. I know. The one that I have is the Ava Unit 1 one, which I bought. So, you know, I can't talk. I can't say anything. It's the one that I have.

And I was like, this is neat. And it just kind of hangs up on my art wall now because I don't, you know, the gameplay is so stripped down in a loop that I'm already not always super invested in to begin with. So it's just kind of like a... a piece of art for me more than it is a game. Then they have the Tamagotchi Connections, which is like the 2000s era fan favorite that they're also reproducing. The Tamagotchi Uni, which is a...

a smartwatch inspired device that like comes with a piece of like rubber that you wear it like a watch. Um, and has a touchscreen and has wi-fi connection and like downloadable dlc and live events and then now the new tamagotchi paradise which is a really weird

it's bigger so yeah you have a uni and the left one is the paradise is that right yeah so this is the uni here and this is the paradise um it is bigger it is chunkier it has like for the first time this sort of like not the first time ever but like a new engagement tactic with this

the spin wheel here which stopwatch spin yeah it makes it look more watch like than the watch one which i know and it's actually funny that you mentioned that because the thing that i like about the uni if it goes back or if you saw it when it came on is that this one when it turns on will have the time and the date on it the paradise well yeah where as uni is supposed to be a watch but if i was walking around and i brought this up from sleep

It doesn't give a shit. It's like a little baby in a sunroom with a couch. I'm going to take a screenshot and put it in the episode. basic like i want to say story conceits with both of these devices which is the tamagotchi uni god really feels like a post-covid device it's um Is it post COVID? Yeah, it's 2023.

And the basic thing is that you're raising your Tamagotchi into what's basically an apartment. You can switch between rooms. Okay, this is the app thing. But you can switch between rooms. There's a kitchen. There's a bathroom. I don't like that the toilet had a mouth. I don't like that. It was on the side. Yeah, there's a bedroom and there's like a little yard.

um oh look at that little bush guy yeah and it has a pad which is very nice yeah um and then the like the the options that you have are to

Buy more food for your Tamagotchi. You use a food delivery service. You can play games by bringing your Tamagotchi to the mall or to the... to the arcade um and then there is also a if we go to our little apps the couch has a face too so many things have a face it all has faces If you go to the middle device here that looks like the World Wide Web and you go to the Tomiverse, your guy literally puts on like a VR screen thing.

And this is how you connect to the internet. Oh my god. This is wild. This is like the internet from Futurama. This is like virtual space. Big, bright, colorful. This virtual space immediately reminds me of...

Oh my god, what was the... Oh my god, I've played so many fucking stupid fashion games that I can't get the right one in my head. The Switch one, it was like the... i can only remember the japanese i can only remember girls mode which is not what it's called here style savvy but it wasn't called style savvy it was like it was fashion was it fashion dreamer fashion dreamer thank you um

The version of the virtual space here in color palette and kind of styling reminds me of Fashion Dreamer where it's like there's like this sort of... neon and pastel combo like grid and then and then like these uh structures these like destinations what's going on in the tama arena

I don't actually know. Is there a live concert? There's a couple things that I don't have access to because both of these are still teens. I've only been, quote unquote, running them for a few days. Right, they're not adults. They can't get into the bar. But the basic thing when you connect to Tomiverse is that you see other users, Tomagotchis, and you can like compliment them. I think there's a store thing where you can buy. like cosmetic items, but only cosmetic items.

based off of outfits that people have already made. The Fashion Dreamer callout is actually a really good one because the DLC for this device, which has DLC, there's a bunch of expansions that are like five bucks. um battle pass like what's going on what are we doing um it's more like splatoon splat fests Okay, yeah. So you have the DLC, which will bring you to...

Different Tomover, I don't know what this is downloading. I'm just going to leave this here. It brings you to other Tomoverse locations. So there's a free one called like Berry Garden and it's dessert decorations. There's like a school. one there's a san rio one that's like a kind of recreation of what the okay you are it says the event

It was finished. Look forward to the next. And then it kicked you out of the arena. Well worth the download. That's right. Well, now I know where to go because I know what that actually does. So there's other DLC is what I was saying. But the events, like what I was talking about and why. was comparing it to Spatoon is because they will do monthly events for a week.

where you kind of pick the team that you're representing. And there's a mini game that you can continue to play to get limited run items. So for July, the one that I just missed, it was like a surfing thing where you could get like... I think like a fish hat and like a, like a thing that looked like you were running through a goal line because it was like a race sort of game. So.

That's what's happening with the Tamagotchi uni. If you, if you want a device, if you've been like casually curious in Tamagotchi or whatever, live events or something that appeal to you the way that it appealed to me, which is why I eventually wanted a uni.

that's out there for you i guess i didn't um i didn't go through the whole onboarding thing and i can make it pretty quick which is that uh in the recent i believe it was the nintendo direct for the switch 2 or the one right before it the Tamagotchi Plaza game for the Switch was released or was announced. And that's a Switch game with franchise characters where you're like doing little mini games in little stores in the plaza.

And I was just like watching a playthrough of that game because I was curious about it. And it was like really weird to see the characters like moving around in 3D. Right, because they're, I guess for people who don't, who haven't seen these, you should go look up.

tamagotchi characters um just to get a vibe they are very doodly they're blobby they're like you know if you drew like a a slightly off-kilter circle and then put like a couple dots in and then a line for a mouth you've gotten towards a tamagotchi character design and then like if you give it like a little weird asymmetrical hat or big lips or like a very simple line line work um yeah they're very iconic but like they are very simple

The modern ones are like full color, but the early generations, it's like calculator screen type. Yeah, 100%. Like very big pixels. just black on gray functionally with a with a backlight sometimes and like less detailed because of that than like early gen pokemon or something like they're they are very simple very iconic You know, closer to, but even simpler than Hello Kitty Sanrio style designs. Think of the icons for Pokemon when they were in storage in your box.

Yeah, that's a great touchstone, actually. Yeah, totally. But you're right, Allie, watching the Tamagotchi Plaza versions of these characters running around the guard or the park or getting dental work done. Is this a... flash game collection yeah oh my god they're pulling little guys out of cavities gross i think that the basic

Like gameplay loop for that game is that you do repeated mini games at a single store until you can unlock other ones in the plaza. And there are some like... code to code uh communications between the uni and the plaza as well so like if i had a plaza now i would unlock game stuff in in both devices i think it is a while to just think about these devices as having online connections as having dlc as having because they come from an era where that was just not

happening generally you know we're we're the first time we actually is like 97 or something right and obviously the promise of the the internet quote unquote is is pretty clear if you're if you're locked in but like standalone devices getting digital getting updates, getting, you know, new content, getting even bug fixes, which is not a thing at that point yet, you know? And so to think about something so like this, getting it is wild.

This also, so Allie, I know you're going to get to this, but the Paradise does not have these online features. It does not have DLC as far as I know. It does not have like an online... space right it is back to that um i mean not normally how we use the phrase walled garden but like kind of literally a walled garden um like in environment which I know a lot of people online...

including myself, had the thought of like, well, that's sort of weird. Why would you go backwards like that? But when you explain it like that, it like kind of makes sense to me in the sense of like... it's very complicated and i can imagine someone who's buying this for their kid who just wants their kid to have like one thing that will keep them quiet in the car or something um

Or on the bus or whatever. Having all of the connectivity to other video games and other stuff they have to buy. They're going to get nagged about the DLC and all of this stuff. I can imagine them getting the uni for their kid and being like, this is too fucking much. I just want them to have an egg and there's a little guy in the egg who needs to be fed. That's all I want them to deal with.

Yeah, it is such a weird thing. And that's why I think, like, understanding the history of Tamagotchi is what makes understanding why the Paradise such an interesting device, especially post the uni, is... is like part of that conversation because um like when you think about the gene mixing mechanics being something that like fans have sort of chased and are really excited for or didn't get to experience if they you know aren't the type of person who are gonna

import a device that isn't in their own language and things like that. It's not that Tamagotchi devices didn't have DLC in the past. It's that they... had really weird experimentations with how to do that. So you would either like...

There's somewhere you would buy a little charm for your device and you would stick it into it and then it would stand gameplay that way. Or you would, the same way the Paradise kind of works, you would go to this retail space. Right. Again, like a Pokemon event where you would go and get your Mew or whatever.

right 100 yeah like that you would like scan a thing at a store the way that the paradise works actually is that they now have a tamagotchi lab set up in retail devices or retail spaces like the the Bandai store. And right now they're actually doing monthly like items that they're going out. Like today I went to the Bandai store to get like, the funny tree and the meerkat like hot dogs so I can eventually buy it for my guy later on.

But yeah, and then I on the on the like live service versus closed service, like tip on me, the uni and the paradise, like, yeah, it is true that the paradise, I mean, the uni is going to be a really fun and a really good device for as long. as those things are supported, which they are now and they are not always going to be.

That's also true of physical location drop things, though. For sure, for sure, for sure. But an interesting thing that I've seen through the Tamagotchi fandom is that previous attempts at this technology have been restored.

through fandom efforts so previous things were like a tamagotchi would have like an in like a companion app that you would get codes from or like a flash game website that you would play mini games on to get a code to unlock a thing that you know you're not downloading onto the device it's already in there but you need the code to access it like those codes are still available or in some cases those flash games are actually still available and being hosted on

private server and you can still kind of have your experience of this kind of paired gameplay the way that you would have in like 2008 or whatever it was.

So there's interesting stuff there. I mean, I think that people have even figured out how to... communicate infrared stuff to get some of those retail things like i've actually already seen with the paradise like in the tamagotchi collector's discord it was like a photo of somebody who took the like these little three connectors where the data transfer is on this kind of top of the device yeah

And it was a photo of those with like three metal pins against it. And each of those pins having a wire. I was like, what the fuck is going on? I'm doing Frankenstein shit. We should say that the device to expose those.

like a little egg top thing yeah yeah and when you talk about wires going in there my first thought is like oh sure it's like brain surgery yeah that's how it feels 100 yeah i don't i don't know where like the the data is is moving and like you know but i i'm just like so impressed by people who are like i am already gonna pull the this shit as wide open as i can because i know at a certain point i'm gonna want to or i'm gonna need to um yeah or like now we have to start those efforts right

now so that if we need to down the road we've done that work already you know right yeah exactly i will say it's interesting to go back to your covid metaphor for the uni how much you go from one where it's like okay this is a game about being in the apartment and connecting to the virtual world and down and literally downloading updates to it and stuff like that.

versus one that's insisting on or increasing obstacles to that sort of online connectivity and insisting on in-person meetups, you know, connecting physically from one device to another by clicking them together, like locking them together. There does seem like a mid and post-COVID.

difference in the experience like you know we don't I don't need to start quoting Walter Benjamin here but there is something about like there's an aura to this object they want the object itself to be where the game is You know, and yes, you can take it physically places to get those extensions again. I'm curious what the loop is, if the loop is the same on the game itself, or has it changed? So a thing that I...

a thing that I find really appealing about the, uh, the paradise and the, um, like this edition is this sort of zoom and thing. So if the, if the uni is about raising a child in an apartment, um, the paradise. Is that you are literally a representation of the Tamagotchi lab. The actual like manual. explanation for this is that Tamagotchis have been so loved by the world since the 90s that another Tamagotchi world was born.

And what you're actually doing is caring for the world of Tamagotchi, which is this like sort of home screen little world guy. I love him because he reminds me of a sunfish.

And the like cosmetics and stuff that I am eventually going to unlock are going to be for this guy and not the one on the micro center that I'm like doing the care of. Yeah. There's a star field with a little Tamagotchi with a. world like an earth that has a face on it with the big lips the thing about this is like there's a there's a zoom wheel when you zoom all the way out is space when you zoom all the way in it's guts yeah Another interesting thing, just before we zoom in, I...

there's a planet level that you can access and when you go to that menu it gives you a goal like it tells me what I should be doing next in the game and right now keep raising my guy It'll eventually encourage me to like breathe them off and you gotta, gotta, um, as we go on. But yeah, so you, you scroll through the thing. It makes a great noise when you do it. Makes a great noise.

When you zoom out. Another thing that I kind of like about the wheel is that it really wants to go back to default point of view. Yeah, I see that. You have to give it like a full spin to make you connect. Yeah. There's a field view. There's a poop to clean up. There's a poop to clean up. I know. I know. It's really funny. So there's a field view, which I actually was like... It got pushed away. Oh, my God. Why? Oh, that's the poop.

Are you saving that poop for something? Yeah, it's like biofuel. Eventually once the tank fills, I'm going to be able to visit another planet just to unlock some more cosmetics.

cool um hey i'm not mad at that but yeah so here's my field view of my little guy and another interesting thing about the the loop about this that it's not like you're taking care of pet on within a pet so there's like already an explosion of sort of the loop there that there's like this permanent thing but also this this sort of ground level thing that you eventually have to like move on from but because the sort of conceit is what you're doing

is you're nurturing the world by nurturing the creatures on it. When this little octopus guy or whatever... becomes a parent and moves on, he's still going to be, like, wiggling around in My World Zoo. Oh, interesting. Because it exists in the world. That's cool. Yeah, paradise. It's a place. Wait, does that... So, they don't... Do they not... Age and die? I don't know about that. I know that there's some encouragement of changing fields.

And the Tamagotchi that you leave behind will stay on their field. And I don't know if you go back, if they'll still be there. But yeah, so that's a little bit of a weirdness there.

the field in this question again it's just to contrast it with the apartment on the uni is like a oh my god the expression it just made is so cute sorry uh it's like a underwater this this particular field is an underwater space the sea edition right so you out in an underwater there's also land and sky yeah there's land and sky which are a little squid guy is the guy here versus the little blob that you had on the other one yeah so this is my little guy um so cute

it's really good and then yeah there is this the cell view which is oh my god what the fuck you're inside your cell And then another thing that I find interesting about these field of views is that each of them have their own menu system. So the cell view is how you view hunger and happiness. I see.

um when you zoom out on the guy when you're on him it's basic care for the little guy um and then you can kind of zoom in on the fields and this is how you clean things or how you set furniture or do an egg hunt or outside toy um egg hunt is the way that you get food in this game instead of a delivery guy you um like go and like dig

You like literally dig for eggs and crack the moment and there's food inside. A funny comment that I saw about some of the comparisons between these devices is somebody saying like... I find the paradise really weird because in devices like the uni or the, the, uh, Tamagotchi picks, like.

my tamagotchi was like an adult who got a job and got married and now i'm like feeding it things that i found on the ground because like this game does sort of make them more like animalistic whereas like the end point in the tamagotchi uni like your your pet leaves the apartment because you marry it off oh my god so much different Much different. Yeah. So it's, it's an interesting thing, but yeah, depending on the device that you get is the field quote unquote that you start on.

start out on but then you unlock them through play so when i get when i get my second pet is when i'll be able to move fields um god i'm actually now

Also, looking at this, the Tamagotchi Paradise is bigger. It's like a chunkier plastic. It's like very toy-like. When you compare it to the uni, the uni is... still like toy like it's still brightly colored still plastic but there is like a subtlety to it like the buttons seem a little smaller and things like that and the way you're describing the loop makes me think like Is the uni also a bit for adults? Because it has that thing of...

There was, do you remember that mobile game where there was like a little frog and you take care of the frog and you send him on adventures and then he sends you postcards and then you... Care to something something? Yeah. What was that called?

I don't remember. Well, yeah, it's fine. But yes. Travel Frog. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was essentially called Travel Frog and they did a study about it and they found that like... the the demographics playing it they did a study in like japan korea and china i think and in china i might be getting this very wrong um they saw the frog like

women who are playing the game often saw the frog as their son, I think. And in Japan, women who are playing the game often saw the frog as like their husband who is like going on work trips. um versus and it was like it was like a taking taking care of them and them them going on adventures kind of like the way that they it was it was like a weird sort of thing and it so it made me what you're saying made me think of that we're like oh right you're raising

A little guy who gets married and moves out. And then you're going to raise another little guy who's going to get married and move out. it just feels it feels it feels like it's kind of doing that that same thing where it's like okay this is ostensibly for children but there is there also like a thing here that they're looking at with I don't know it feels a little targeted I guess it feels like Not just post-COVID, but like of a certain moment.

yeah i mean yeah there's definitely you know when you think about it of like because there's a mothering aspect of all of these right like you have a baby it cries you feed it milk it gets bigger like you you're cleaning up its poop and stuff like um And, you know, the Tamagotchi Paradise does feel... really clinical because you are literally this representation of like a scientist or whatever like when they were doing right um cross promotional events on the uni to like

be like hey the paradise is coming out soon you should get it the like the cosmetics that you were getting were like a lab coat and like a little hat that looks like a bald head with like fluffy like uh scientist hair so they're like leading into like you know you know the uni is definitely so much more of a like parenting

a this is a device that you're going to want to take out in the world with you kind of thing a thing that i didn't even get into here is that the uh the uni because it has like wi-fi connectivity it has some like basic features where If I go out, I can do a quote-unquote Thomas search. And based on the Wi-Fi pings that it finds in the area, I will find Tamagotchi friends. Your friend passing.

yeah basically yeah it's kind of like a street pass but it isn't And then also there's like sort of like a basic sort of pedometer aspect where there's the thing called the Tamagotchi walk and it counts your steps on a 20 minute timer and you unlock like a... crafting recipe that's in game for part of the crafting mechanics

Whereas, you know, the paradise is not that. It is this, like, you are nurturing the earth. And, like, the, you know, the thought of, I don't know, like... it is the expansion of gameplay that I find really interesting that there's like a, there's now a two pet level system happening here where like,

Like I said, the play of care is happening on an individual basis with the thing. And they're actually separate mini games that you can play. Like the mini games that you can play on the... quote-unquote pet level are just games that you are playing with your pets to increase its mood whereas there is a lab functionality i actually miss this because you

plug in the thing um but it actually has like a whole separate ui and there are different games that you can play there that oh wow earn you money Right, and this UI feels like you're looking at the lab UI instead of the pet control UI. Yeah, and it literally says lab log. And it has like an open book. It actually looks more like the UI from the uni. It does.

that's really funny yeah whereas the uni is trying to be an iphone you know i mean like that is an app screen yeah you know no doubt about it um

is yeah i have a fandom question that can maybe move us on to the next part of this conversation which is like the the tonagachi discord uh or the reddit or those sorts of fandom spaces that you've been perusing as you've been going on this journey. Are these people who are... generally engaged with the overall holistic tamagotchi experience raising pets games uh you know exploring the different fields on the on the paradise

Or is it a mix of that and then also people who are only interested in one part of it? Like, oh, I want to collect all the pets or I want to see all the pets. I want to collect all the different models. I want these as bag charms versus I want these as games to play. Yeah, 100%. I think it's a fair mix. I think that what you'll find, especially because of the vintage quality of a lot of these devices and the fact that a lot of the...

The supported devices right now are reprints of other sorts of devices. Like older ones, like the classic. They're still making the old school, you know... uh lcd screen or whatever ones like right 100 and marketing them as such yeah and like you know if if i go to the playstation uh network store to go

pre-order Resident Evil 9 Capcom sure as hell wants to sell me Resident Evil 2 as well while I'm doing that transaction but it's not it's also not the same as like I'm going to the store to get the Switch 2 and the Switch And the Switch is on the shelf, and then right next to it is the Game Boy and also a 3DS. Right. And you're sort of getting a mix of those experiences when you're going to the Bandai store, at least.

The online retailers are kind of weird there. But that's kind of like what Bandai is supporting and producing and yada yada. So yes, there's definitely the collector's aspect of it. And what I think is interesting is that... there are ways that these devices obviously encourage that sort of collector spirit. So the Tamagotchi Paradise has each of the three color devices have like a secret pet.

that is exclusive to those devices. And the way that you unlock those pets is by plugging in the device that you have into both of the other devices. So if you have access to all three and you are a guy who really cares about collecting all of the adults and you have that collector spirit and you are buying all three of them, you are rewarded in that way.

Um, the Tamagotchi uni did something interesting where there's the base level designs and then they would have special editions, which were like angel festival. Oh, I was just looking at this. And the Sanrio one. And those are additional DLC that even though I have a baseline, I can access those just by paying $5. But if I, for instance, bought...

If I owned this and they released the Sanrio one, I was like, fuck, I really want the Sanrio one. And I bought it. The code that it comes with, it can be used three times. If I'm like, oh, but I already have one, but I still want that one, I would know that I would be able to download the shit to my old device. Or if I had a friend...

who had a time I got to uni and this whole time I was like, gosh, I kind of really want one, but I didn't get one, you know, in that chance. I would get the Sanrio one, give the code to her, and then it would, you know, it would kind of enhance this sort of community experience. Other things that I, you know, there is obviously the gameplay interest in the game in the community.

what i've seen in the tamagotchi collectors discord is they'll do like um hatch events with each other so like it'll be like hey on this day uh everybody in this community is gonna start an egg on the same day and we're all going to hatch together and we're going to post about it and we're going to laugh and you know they're kind of all going to be the same

timeline and age and we're going to experience this together um obviously the tamagotchi uni live events support that sort of thing because like even if i'm not logging into my uni every day I'm probably going to on the weeks where there's an event. And because it's that sort of splat fest, I'm either choosing team A, B, or C. I want to...

I want team B to win. Like, you know, you're going to want team B. So like, so there's, there's, you know, the, the way that communities have been built and have been encouraged by the, the, the developers that way. is something really interesting to me that i've seen through digging into these spaces you know what i mean um i guess i do want to call out the the one creator who like

I initially watched her Tamagotchi Plaza and then her Tamagotchi Uni video. And that's the first time that I saw a full color. tamagotchi and that's why i really wanted one because i was like these animations are beautiful like the pixel art is really good like if you were somebody who like come a long way yeah if you like the general design of tamagotchi without like being in the fandom space at all like coming to see this and and being like wow that actually looks really clean

was something that convinced me. So her YouTube channel is The Force Maury. And I think she has a good mix of enthusiasm and like... gameplay explanation that I appreciated seeing in a YouTube video. When I was just searching for stuff before we started recording, I ran into a bunch of her stuff and was like, oh, this seems like the person to follow for this stuff. Yeah, that's fair to say. And then also, I guess you would mention that like.

customization keychain thing which is a big it part of why i even decided to buy one of these devices at all is that i was initially like not moved by the design of the uni very much like it um it's a little utilitarian. Like it is, it is, um, yeah, it's bright and colorful. It's you, you know, I think you were just saying like, you wouldn't be, you wouldn't say it isn't a toy, but it has a phony, a phone ish.

you know quality to it too if it was like silver it would kind of look like a diabetes blood tracking thing right right and you know when you compare some of these older devices which would have these like A big part of the collection of the older devices is the variation in shell that I don't think that we've mentioned here, where they would have a lot of different colors and a lot of different design philosophies.

Like... the goth girly who wanted like a purple one with like bat wings on it or whatever you would have that or you would have these like really bright pop art situations where like it was bright blue and it looked like a clock and like you know there was this sort of like the one that's yours and wear it and you know match it with your outfit and things like that that

make tamagotchi really interesting and why i was like the uni just kind of doesn't it like barely looks like an egg you know what i mean like it's really flat because it wants to be you know it's like have you ever seen a the the apple watch without the strap on like it's like a weird little it's like a little thing it's like it's like a it's like a weird little token i don't know i don't even know it's it's like feels alien

But like because they're going for that watch kind of profile, they have to get rid of some of the egginess of it. And it shows. Well, it does literally even have a watch strap you can get for it. It just looks like an e-watch or whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the thing that ended up... Smart watch. An e-watch. An i-watch. Every time I think you're going to say Ewok.

It's an Ewok. It kind of looks like an Ewok. Some of the Tamagotchis look kind of like a little Ewok. Actually, we could talk about it. The boo-boos are just knock-off Ewoks, as far as I'm concerned. Whoa!

That is fair to say. That is fair to say. Yeah. So, I mean, I guess the last point on some of the aesthetics of the Tamagotchi uni that is going to pull us into this next segment is the thing that ended up... making me come around and really wanting a Tamagotchi uni was seeing how people customized it. If you see, if you look at the picture that Austin is going to post of this, there is like this, this purple shell. And then there's these two colors around the screen.

And that is a piece of paper under a faceplate. And people have figured out ways to either unscrew it on the back or just kind of clock that thing off. So the purple stays the same. You gotta get your spudger out.

Yes. Right. Yes. But the green and pink under the plastic where it says Tamagotchi Uni, that can change. That can be whatever you want it to be. And I've also seen like... people using like little key chains to carry it around either through like little silicon cases that go around it or through crocheting things And the way that the device kind of encourages you to want to take it out, to want to, you know.

I'm about to get off the bus and I'm going to activate the Tamagotchi watch and I'm going to be walking for the Tamagotchi walk. And I'm going to be getting these points while I'm walking for the next 20 minutes because, you know, me and my Tamagotchi are going out together. Like that's sort of like, oh.

It's going to be a device that both lives with me and is encouraged to live with me and also doesn't take a ton of care, but will have these sort of like... the sort of like live events that i'm used to as somebody who is a gamer and is used to sort of the battle passy sort of things of like yeah i can work for a week to get right yeah yeah right and like the older ones did take a lot of care

is is a thing to note like these ones feel like they're a little more able to be an accessory that like kind of has some some fun things to do yeah with the other ones it was very much like

Okay, you got to wake up to feed this thing. 100%. The funny thing about the Tamagotchi paradise is at like seven o'clock yesterday, I just kind of turned it on to see what was going on. And my Tamagotchi was like, should I go to sleep? And I was like... yeah man and then i just knew i didn't have to touch it for the rest of the night whereas with the uni like

uh the time i got you was like brushing its teeth and it was like hanging out in his bedroom and i was like i'm getting signs that you want to go to bed so i'm just not going to pay attention to you and that's kind of how that went um And like the paradise sleeps in longer than the devices. So both of these have babysitting mechanics in them. You do have to pay in game currency to do it. But like, if you know that you're.

in finals week or you're going to be on a plane or you know a couple hours you are absolutely not going to be responding to care calls or you're like running for a specific pet and you know that you're not like going to hit the the uh like achievements that you're going to need to to unlock the special guy um you will have the the babysitter will kind of be alleviate some of that in my day I've told, I think I've told this story on something before, but like.

When I was in grade school and virtual pets were like the thing. First of all, I don't think anyone I knew had an actual Tamagotchi. We all had like the knockoff ones. I had a nano pet. A lot of people had giga pets.

um which were a lot of people had like just like weird third party ones where it's like yeah there's 16 kinds of dinosaur in this one you get to pick at the start which dinosaur you want to raise um lots of like weird shit And my racket for a little while in grade school was everyone was, for some reason, had gotten really into touch football.

except for me weird okay so so all of these like all of these like french immersion kids are in the the back of the schoolyard playing touch football everyone gives me a quarter i have a necklace with like these little like compartments and it was like a necklace with like a it was like a heart shape with like rose vines and stuff and i would use it to clip all of the different virtual pets too

And then while everyone was playing touch football, I would make sure their pets were fed and stuff. Right. Yes, of course. That was my racket. And now fucking Tamagotchi is coming for the intrepid, industrious little schoolyard babysitters. We're just trying to make a little bit of extra candy money on the side. The 11-year-old entrepreneurs out there get a new gig. Wow. God, maybe they can start hawking fake labooboos now. That seems to be...

where uh where it's all going so yes indeed which was your other connection here right was like yeah right little guys you can put on your necklace bag whatever yeah and that is what i want tamagashi to be for me and like the labubu culture even though you know i i have been able to avoid labubu personally because i'm gonna ask you to define labubu this is what i do on the show

And also, what is a LeBubu versus a LeFouFou? It's a fake, right? A LeFouFou is a fake? Yeah, a LeFouFou is a knockoff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow. so um the labubu is when people talk about it are they they're referring to a like little plush keychain um produced by a company called pop mart um that comes in a variety of colors and sets that I will get into for a second.

First, I want to say that the designer of the character is Kai Sing Leung, a Hong Kong artist who now lives in Belgium. The, like, Le Bubu existed in this thing called the Monsters, which... He was like inspired by fairy tales and stuff. He was eventually licensed by Pop Mart, which is a like a toy producing company.

that vinyl like you get like a vinyl figurines but also yeah they're not always vinyls you know with the with the population of libubu there's a ton more of these sort of plush things um there's like little keychains there's Austin, you have some Pop Mart stuff. I believe it. Because, yeah, Pop Mart is... Popmart blind boxes were a bit of a gateway drug for me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And yeah, I guess I want to start that at the same because like I...

We are going to be dismissive of some of the business decisions as we go on. But Pop Mart is something that I originally interacted with because... um there is an artist nori that i really liked who was a like a japanese um designer of figures who would do this just a girl line and he would have these really limited releases that were only released in japan sold out super quickly and they were basically just a girl it would be like a girl with a certain type of haircut wearing a a shirt with a

certain color or different color pants and just sort of the like customization of the outfit and just the the simpleness of the design and her being just somebody you would see on the street was kind of interesting. I really, really, really wanted one for a long time. And Pop Mart ended up doing one of, similarly, one of these licensing deals and doing a blind box with him where it was just like a little... limited run of figures in that sort of design aspect.

um that you could that were really accessible like you know pop mart for me is a opportunity for me to buy a piece of art from an artist that i admired for a really long time i see Previously, stuff from those folks would have been harder to get before the Pop Mart deal. Is that what you're saying? Only if they just weren't available in that sort of product form.

It's as much as you have access to an independent artist, right? So if I, for instance, lived in Tokyo and was going to the same toy shows that that guy was going to, sure, I could have picked one up. But as an American and, you know, things happening there. And I feel like people kind of feel this.

same way but like you know when you go to the pop mart store you kind of have to scroll down a little bit on the on the website of course but it does it does tell you who the artist is and kind of gives you a little bit of profile for there there's like some attempt to focus on that that's where that stuff is coming from obviously they also do a pun of license stuff uh mentioning that Austin has some Popmart stuff is going to lead me to why this

Demon app is kind of still on my phone. The thing that I've been chasing right now is that they are doing a run of Alloy. figurines of Dragon Ball vehicles. Oh, that's cool. Yeah, so they're like four to five inch figures that are basically Dragon Ball Hot Wheels. And I really fucking want mine. And I really specifically want the Bulma's motorcycle, the capsule motorcycle. And...

I was trying to engage with some of these systems to get it. But I was also, I mean, I got pulled into this, of course. Wait, some of these systems? Right. Yes, indeed. Yes, indeed. So a friend of mine really wanted a Luwuwu, which we've said is this plush toy. I think that we haven't explained what...

blind boxes are fully which is that basically um you will they will advertise a set of toys that are sold within like the same cardboard package or whatever so You buy a box. You don't know what's inside of it. You sort of know the six or seven options that there's going to be. And then there will also be.

an even limited chance to get a secret item. And sometimes those secret items you haven't even seen a picture of. They'll include an outline to make it more desirable and sort of... Yeah, you go, ooh, what could that silhouette be? Yeah, yeah. Right. And then, so Labubu, right now, as far as the SKUs that you'll find, is a set called Big in Energy, which are kind of fluffier.

brighter rainbow-colored sets of... these little guys which are again like little maybe three to four inch long plushies of kind of little fluffy monster guy with a face sometimes they're making funny expressions but they have like a big monster teeth smile and like big sort of pupil like

single people. Very Where the Wild Things Are. 100%. Where the Wild Things Are meets Teletubbies. Yeah. But with more monstrous, you know, faces. Yeah, they have, like, little claws. They're, like, monster-y, but they're kind of cute, and they're, like, little animal guys.

So there's the big in energy. There's the macaroon set, which is a little softer and also softer colors. Oh, I see. There's a really funny... coke tie-in which has three different figures and two of them are just like normal light uh white labubus like holding a bottle of coke the third one is a little one inside of a can

but they didn't sew legs on because I guess they just assumed you would never take it out of the can. Oh, so there's nothing under there? Yeah, you can take them out and it's just like a nub. It is so...

Wild. Yeah, it's like you were buying half a figure. It's very strange. There's also like... other licensed things like they'll sell you a keychain they will sell you a magnet they will sell like right of course bigger figures of these things that don't have these sort of randomization element to it it's just like not just like a little king outfit accessories right i see yeah um also maybe we're mentioning they are of the stuff that pop mart offers the most expensive basically

the boo-boo stuff i from what i've seen anyway like a lot there's a lot of stuff you can get that like at the 60 mark Oh, so those big figures, those big figures that are one of one are $60. The... The smaller bag charm figures, which is what the people really want, are really only like $25 to $28. And there are other licenses.

that are all within that price range but that's for a blind box to me still quite expensive it sure is this says 37.99 Canadian for one of these uh macaron uh vinyl face blind boxes right and i'm used to maybe 25 canadian like us prices i i usually see blind boxes in the range of like

$8 to $20, $20-ish. Right. Yeah. So, Liboboos are a bit above that, usually. Yeah, I mean... within the the pop marketplace they're kind of average and i will say as a trinkets girl as a blind box person like those prices have been going up i used to like yeah i used to be able to get it's not what it used to be yeah yeah I would get a blind box of like a, fuck.

ball jointed dolls okay you cannot get any the one that i was thinking of is like they'll do like snoopy's living room or snoopy's kitchen and the blind box will be like it'll be a full set of a snoopy like cafe or whatever and the blind box will be like either you'll get a set of a counter with a plate of cookies and uh

pot of coffee or you'll get one with a newspaper and a little thing that looks like a coffee tree and like yeah yeah so the prices of those have expanded from like 11 to 15 to like even even 16 70 in my lifetime so you know I the movies are expensive i don't want to say that they aren't but like in the grand scope of things it just feels like the price is in general the entire hobby is going up yeah yeah is that yeah there's a bunch of reasons why that is there's not one reason but

yeah yeah tariffs and and interest and yeah everything blind boxing blind box stuff has become more of a thing like i believe and ali correct me if i'm wrong that part of the thing with labubus was because rosé had one on her bag or something i believe so yeah yeah yeah so it became sort of a as part of the greater like bag charm wave That has been happening. Yeah. And this, I mean, this is something that has been a trend over time. The bag charm is not a new thing.

No. Like, you know. But it's been surging. It's been surging in a big way. Like it's funny because you can even think of like, I want to say last summer, maybe last fall, the bag charm trends that a lot of like big brands were going into were bag charms of rep. uh recreations of the bags that they sold so that's why you'll see like there's bagu bag charms that look like backpacks or their fanny packs like right

even Kate Spade and like Gucci were doing this sort of like little key chainization. So like the Lou Boo Boo is just like an extension of that. But like if, if, you know. i'm saying this dismissively but like in a fucking culture that is run by now blind boxes and draft kings like the fact that and pokemon cards are huge again yeah yeah yeah this sort of chasing a thing

is really weird to me. And I think like, you know, people are so dismissive and I think, you know, rightfully sort of confused by the way that this has blown up. But the thing that like... is shocking to me is that like people don't even realize that this is a blind box they don't they don't realize that there's a gambling aspect to this they don't realize that like there are people buying multiples and multiples of these things because they're secret chasing because they want the one that's

purple or that's like perfectly brown and right that's how i got pulled into this bullshit because my friend really wanted one she was like well i'm gonna buy one for my niece and i'm gonna buy one for myself and i have to keep logging to the app and when they when they come back and start because you only have like the five seconds to fucking get them. So she got one. She was like, I don't know that I want this color. So I'm going to buy a second one. And then. Oh my God.

I was like, because I thought she was just buying it. And there's no pity on the Labubu banner. This probably is not a, you know, yeah. No, you can't have pity. Well, I mean, now I will set some blind boxes. I don't know if this is true of Labubu, but if some blind boxes, if you buy them. full set.

If you buy, like, the box with all the boxes, they will give, if you get one of every one, including the special one, like, that's not uncommon, but you do have to buy all of them. You do have to buy ten of them or whatever. And they do, yeah, and there are people who certainly buy cases.

Pop Mart does an interesting thing is that you're not guaranteed the secret if you buy a set. Obviously, that's just not how the secret works. But if you do get the secret and you bought a case, they will mail you the one that's missing. which i thought was like oh okay i mean okay so they will do that so yeah if you spend three hundred dollars then right yeah yeah yeah um so let me kind of get into what pop now actually is because when you go now pop now pop now um because

so you can also context here is that the purchase yeah the purchase um opportunity for Lububu sort of shifted recently because of bots and resellers and the huge explosion of popularization that you used to be able to just log onto the website and buy one. Or you used to be able to go to one of the popular stores and buy one. They don't sell them in stores.

doors anymore or i don't think in the u.s region at least um you can't use the website to do it because they turn that off and have now made it only app-based so you need this fucking demon on your phone to even buy one And then so you can you can log into the store. You can see a product that you want. You add it to your cart. You close it. You're done. That's fine.

Except they have this thing called Pop Now, which is a virtual representation of buying a pop. uh like a blind box in the store you are given this like virtual this representation of a like the display case that we referred to before with the the 10 different boxes all neatly lined up in it. And you can click each one and press a button to shake it. And it'll say, because you shook it, you know that there's not these two in the box.

So if you're, for instance, secret chasing, or if you're like me and you really want that Bulma motorcycle, or you're just like more casual, like I ran into a thing, the Pop Mart. My focus besides the Dragon Ball Z thing for me right now is I kind of find that Pucky is really cute. Pucky is like a... Oh, yeah. It's like a little face with like a little duck bill that kind of gives me... It's like a cross between an animal cross.

character and a precious moments for me yeah i see that vibe yeah and the forest party set specifically i think the like use of varied fabrics i think the colors i think the like actual design of the the plushies is really

to me there's like a bird one that's like this pink and yellow bird that has he also did some like no go ahead oh it has this like huge wingspan that like looks really cool in plushy form if you're person who thinks what she's like cool but go on pucky also did um these little like poly pocket style compact ones a couple of years ago. Hey, I might, I might be able to hook you up.

I don't know. We'll have to have a talk later. I appreciate that. But yeah, so... yes through this hint system you can kind of um figure you can avoid ones that you don't want you could avoid repeats i've seen people like and i i almost got caught in this but i've seen people in the like

pucky discord being like well i shook everything in the box and then i saw two that the the two that were the only ones that didn't say they didn't have the thing that i wanted i just bought them because i knew one of them wouldn't have them and that's somebody

transformed just that easily into somebody who's buying two things instead of one you know what i mean yeah whereas you know without this app thing you just go to a store you kind of wiggle it you you know you have fun with your friends and you you buy your thing and you leave and you're either disappointed by it or but here if you don't get it yeah another one

And the physicality of the thing is in your hand. Like as somebody who is trinkets focused, like the ability to pick something up and be like... you know what the only way to appreciate this is not via owning it or like i can understand the scale of this and i can understand that i don't need two or three of these in my home is like an experience that you get at the store and not through the app and you know

because it is an app and because it feels like a game it like you know the the sort of like pressure system that i feel in my head when i first of all would i have to log into the the app every day to do a daily check-in to look at three products and

to text somebody about something. You don't always have to text somebody. You can just lock out of it. There's a social component. This is like part of the dark pattern. Gotcha. Design. Yeah. So through that, I get daily points and I can spend those points for an additional.

hint to figure out what's not in the box that i want so i can i can put myself in this position that that pucky person was in where i was like well i'm just gonna buy these two because i want the thing and i want the thing and the the wanting of the thing is already frustrated by the fact that it's a gamble that you're gambling even picking up the box right yeah but the fact that the the like app is like

You know, the, like, when you look at, like, Labubu fandom spaces, what you will see on a night of release is a flood of these pictures of, like, these are the two that I knew that I got because it's revealed to me in the app. I don't even have to wait for it to come to my home before I have the adrenaline rush of being able to post socials that I have it.

And like, that feels really weird. And, you know, even like I, the thing that I was thinking of when I was thinking about talking about it for the show is that like. If I was somebody who worked for Meta's... fucking billion dollar experience of somebody like we're really going to create growing to the grocery store what it feels like to put milk in your cart seeing people do this shit where like you can see the thing and you can see how pristine it is and you can see how you want it

you can see these boxes and every box is like a potential of this thing that you want and that's what they've been missing is just squeezing the fruit yeah squeezing the fruit in the fruit aisle

Find the good proof. Yeah. And it's just like it just and like, you know, we are video games podcast. We are going to have different ways of talking about the way that we interact with this stuff. But like. I am a person who, like, I can speak to one experience of like, having a weird dinner with my parents, having a really stressful ride home.

coming home, sitting on the couch, and just throwing $40 at Infinity Nikki because the way that I'm going to be happy tonight is to get the haircut that I really want. Yeah. I was playing a mecha gotcha that came out recently.

just be like, oh yeah, this is like, it's really like front mission. I mean, it's quite literally stuff that was built to be a front mission game that didn't release and instead turned into a gotcha. I'm not going to name it. I'm not going to like promote it here beyond, which I'm already kind of doing, but like instantly it was like, well, what?

how much can I put in to feel good tonight on a night that I'm feeling bad, you know, which is bad, terrible, not good. Right. And like in, you know, in the, in the, the treaties, you know, desire and you know, the way that you, you know, I. sort of when I interact with these free-to-play systems I kind of tell myself like if I'm spending about the cost of what I would have spent on a video game anyway then that's fine and that's why the Tamagotchi were appealing because

One is $40, one is $60. That's like the price of a video game. I'm getting a video game out of it. If I want to spend $5 for the expansion, I can do that later on. But in this other system where, like, the results are just, you know... always moving and like dependent on the like physicality of the thing being in stock but it's not even in stock because the way you're interacting with it is this whole digital thing and then like

The weird thing about the Lububu pre-orders that they're doing right now is that like those things weren't shipping until like September. So in theory, it's good that they're trying to respond to demands by even having these pre-orders, but by having the system that like... is a little bit manipulative. That's also become more common with blind boxes in general is the pre-order thing that's like a few months out.

yeah i feel like here's what we have right now yeah yeah but it's one thing if you're like i've been like that for a long time yes you're yeah yeah The thing that's different is, let's say you're pre-ordering October Labubu right now, right? You would then wait until October to see if you got the one you wanted. But every day you can log in and be like...

Am I going to shake it and get the one I want? Oh, it's down to these two. I should buy one and see if it's the one. Does it tell you at that point if you got the one you want? Yeah. So once you check out, it sort of gives you this. okay it's actually even weirder it sort of gives you this option to whether or not you want to find out but that is tied to a clock that's going to tell you anyway so in a couple hours if you check the app again you're going to see what it is

You do have the opportunity. The opportunity. I love to be a consumer. so many products you have the opportunity to you can either just hit the button find out what you got it is what it is but you can invite somebody via a link to this sort of like private chat room where there's a UI where everybody can kind of guess which one that you got. And if you got your guess correct. Yeah.

If you got it correct, you also get a limited run of these points that you eventually turn into more hints down the line. Can I tell you about the most evil version of this that I found? There's a site that I won't name that resells Magic of Gathering cards, Pokemon cards, CSGO skins, One Piece. I've linked it here. Lorkana, like all of the various big collectible things, sports cards, etc.

They are a secondhand dealer. So they are not selling you Pokemon card packs. They are opening their own packs and then repackaging them into different preset packs. that have a bunch of different stuff. You can go onto the site. And so, one, that's already fucked, right? Because they've already jimmied the numbers. Yeah, 100%. Yeah. And also, who can trust them to begin with, right? Also, there's reporting, or not reporting, but there's conversation around.

I'm on places like Reddit that are like, yeah, I bought this thing and it didn't show up for five months. I don't even believe they actually had it. I think they had to wait. You know what I mean? Those sorts of accusations are out there. But one. Kind of a Pokemon Ponzi. Exactly. You can log in. You can see what they're claiming is the drop table.

Uh, they, they don't have real money prices on anything. They have their in system gem pricing, which we know is like an obscurinist tactic to make you not understand how much money anything is. Um, I'll just like link one of these so that you can, you can just like click it and see a thing. You can see what polls other people got, the best drops list. And then the truly fucked one is there is a demo open button. You can hit the button.

to open a pack for fake and see what you could have gotten. So you could do that, get the pleasure of like, oh, look, I would have... gotten this card i would really i would have gotten this sick umbreon if only i'd registered and actually done it and like and then there's the button to register it's fake of course i wouldn't have right you know i i am not making any particular accusations i'm not naming this this company because i haven't done

any sort of like actual journalistic reporting or research on it but all these systems are like so nefarious and so aggressive and the thing that the exact slot machine stream shit it's the slot machine it's all part of that stuff it's all part of that 100 which i think go skins i've made this this statement before on other podcasts maybe even on this one but like

My gut, my armchair kind of, you know, a sociological read on this, this stuff, all of it, the blind boxes, the, you know, the collectible blind boxes from people who want to collect things that have value, not the blind box. buying for the sake of

I think that these things are cute and I'll take one of whatever one I get. Like, I think that there might be a difference between those two things, but I think that the boom of collectibles, the boom in sports betting, the boom in like, you know, the, this style of sex. Secondary market stuff reflects like a deep distrust in the economic system, which is understandable that there is any way of getting ahead through simply.

maintaining a job and getting your income right and like just like saving money. There's just no way. It doesn't feel possible. So I may as well toss a hundred bucks on the game this weekend. I may as well like try to get into Pokemon trading card games because day trading is another big part of this, right? Like the kind of like crypto, you know, using Robin Hood to do day trading, the GameStop stuff.

I think all of that comes from the sense that this system is fucking broken. It's rigged against us. But what if I'm smart enough? A million people are whispering in your ear. All these companies are whispering in your ear saying, but if you play it right, it's not just luck. It's not just that you might get lucky.

You know, especially the sports gambling apps, right? Like you could get the parlay. You could figure out the very clever arrangement of bets to make to where you could get an extra $1,500 in your pocket this week. You could get an extra $10,000. And all it takes is the... right bets all it takes is jiggling the the pack in your hands to say oh i think it feels a little heavier than the other pack right um it's it is it is vulturous like i really think that that it is

acting on a real anxiety and taking advantage of it uh in a nightmarish way and that's on top of just traditional gambling addiction you know parasitism and stuff right like it's just brutal and i don't say that to like again i put some money into a gacha game this week you know like right yeah i'm in the world too um but it is but it is and the thing that about the the kind of card game site that i was just talking about that's so scary to me

And to some degrees, the pop now thing you were just describing is like, to this point, this sort of the card game side I was talking about, many of these techniques don't exist on the first party. variations of this stuff right nintendo is not doing this sort of shit yeah that's exactly right you know um you know listen the pokemon tcg pocket game has some dark pattern type stuff in it i'm not saying it doesn't right but in terms of like well we

packaged our own things and we've given you the fake draw button and we've set up social pressures to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. A lot of those things are not in first party things yet. Pop now is first party. And it's not this bad. I'm not saying it's as bad as the site that I was just describing, but like, let's pay attention and see if more of this stuff floats into first party.

you know kind of things uh and then stream of a world where we could potentially regulate some safety mechanisms around it because uh i don't know man it's scary to think where it could go i yeah and i you know i think that's part of what was scary about it for me with the labubu aspect is because this is such a cultural thing and the core way that people are forced to interact with it

people are not i don't think that it's even on the your sort of radar unless you're in that system or you know someone who's going through it and like i you know i think that La Boo Boo itself is an interesting place. I have a friend who has two young daughters. One is still elementary school age and another is toddler. So I was like, how much of your life is ruled by La Boo Boo?

at the moment and because they're young enough he went to a grocery store he got some lefufu they play games with it they dress them up And, you know, it is what it is. And, like, you know, if you're young enough or if you're not clued in on this stuff enough or you're just like, I'm going to buy the thing at the store that I see, that is what it is.

But if you're high school age where this is like a status symbol for you, if you're an adult who is a collector in this way and you're sort of engaging. with these systems because you know because the the the consumer of it is because i like black pink and i want the thing right i saw my friend who had made beanie babies it's 100 that yeah like it's it is that and like you know i it's you know

I appreciate the community aspect of it as far as what I've seen. People have been really supportive. There's obviously a lot of overconsumption of these things, but it leads to people who get extras and share them with their friends or are willing to... sort of trade them in the way that like probably the development of some of these blind box things were supposed to.

be, you know. And more for years and years. It's not like blind boxes are new necessarily. No, no, no. And they've existed forever. Like if you're like, oh, this sounds similar to gachas. Like the word gacha is based on gachapon, which is what this stuff is like. They're all in the family with each other.

other like blind boxes are just big gotcha pawn basically yeah 100 yeah yeah um to your point ali like we know a lot of this stuff and have like you know Anyone who listens to this podcast has heard someone complain about a gotcha system or complain about FIFA Ultimate Club or talk about the dangers of how even something like the old Xbox marketplace changing from dollars to Microsoft credit points, space bucks.

was like a way of misleading you on how much money you spent. But like, if you're a 15 year old who wants to buy a Lububu... You have not prepared yourself to anticipate the ways in which you might be being manipulated by the marketplace. Right. Not that 15-year-olds are stupid. I think that there are absolutely a lot of those folks. But as something like this... You get people who are not who have not already gone through the arc of being like, oh, wow, it's it's.

tree to shake the box and see if I'm getting the one I want to understanding the ways in which that might be preying on certain predilections they have. Right. Yeah, yeah. And the way that the digitation of that makes it like, oh, I bought one. It wasn't the thing that I want. It's just an app. I'll just hit the button again. It encourages such, just hit the button again.

sort of behavior because the product is so divorced from it um so yeah and then like you know you can be dismissive of trends as much as you want i you know i'm i'm i false Graciously, somewhere in that. But like, you know...

you didn't have to interact with these systems for the beanie babies or the tickle me elbow as, as crazy as those releases. And some of the fanfare never looked up at you and said, if you text your friend about me right now, I'll give you 10% off. Yeah. And you know, I it's just it's just really weird um it is just really weird it is just yeah once you like I do think that there's a degree of like laying it out on the table and being like all right come on

Come on. You know, you can see what this is. Like, it's not hidden. You know, they're not doing a good job of making it not seem, um... exploitative you know in some ways so yeah 100 and you know there's the there's the the thing that you can say like you know you could be the person who's like well at least you're getting a hint if you go to the store you'll never know and like you know like come on man

Just consider it for a second about how this is worse. This is worse, actually. I'm a blind box enjoyer. I don't like... go all out necessarily but i'll pop in to my favorite blind box online retailer every so often and i'll see what they've got coming out um and i'll i'll pick a few things up and like for me

i don't think i would want to know before it's arrived what's in it because like for me that's like the feeling of it's like it's like getting a present like an actual it's it's the closest thing you can do to buying a real present for yourself in the sense that a present is both a thing that you might want and a thing that you don't know what it is.

And so you get that feeling of like, oh, it's a fun little surprise. Like, I don't want to know what it is beforehand. I don't want to know what it is months beforehand, even if it's the thing I want, because I'm not going to, when I get it, be excited in the same. way and what i'm specifically chasing is the excitement of wow this is so cute i'm gonna set it up on the shelf yeah um absolutely if you dilute that and then make it into a thing where i

you know, the loop of it, the loop of getting this smaller taste of it versus getting the real thing. That's I don't want that. That's I know that's garbage. Well, and again, like that's why that site, the card games that I was just talking about feel so fucked is like, you know, I used to work at a card game, comic book and like board game and RPG shop forever ago, 15 years ago. And, you know.

Someone would come in with, with 15 bucks cash, you know, a 60 year old would come in with 15 bucks cash and be like, I want three or four magic packs, you know, and to, and to diet Coke. Right. And then they'd open the packs. They wouldn't get shit.

Maybe they'd be like, can I trade these cards in for something you already have in the shelf, right? But what we couldn't do is say, well, actually, we've prepared our own special packs. And you can, like, flip through it all you want and pull one out and see if you like it.

Uh, and also we don't use dollars here. We use, we use, you know, card points, uh, and you actually have a thousand card points right now. Uh, and, uh, you know, you don't, we weren't even gonna open the pack. We're just gonna like show you the J.

peg that that is like what you got and if you uh if you don't like it just pull another one just you have to just press this button to get another one you have to like give me money in your hand you know it's hooked up to a credit system so that you know you could just you could go a little in debt you know you'll pay us back

later the whole crew interest and also these systems ten dollars buys you 1230 card points that's right yeah not not a thousand card points yeah exactly it's not one-to-one exactly and so like all of those systems shift in our relationship that is already about giving me $5 so you can maybe get something that you want. But often, especially people who are already deep into those sort of systems, like...

I will say another thing about something like a blind box is like, oh, there's seven possible things in here. Let's contrast that with a new Pokemon release that has 150 cards and 50 variations on the best. Yeah, some of it's just energy. Those things tend to be kind of standardized at this point, but like...

you're going to get a lot of shit that you don't care about if what you're trying to do is collect something for its monetary value versus like playing the game. And even if you're trying to play the game often, you're just not getting what you need, you know, to play with. I don't know. It's it is it is I spent a lot of time in those spaces, both as a player and as a consumer. And so I have a strong.

love of my time spent in some of those card games and some of those sort of systems I understand the appeal and also I always frame all my conversations around the stuff with like I grew up in Atlantic City where people were not figuratively using gambling systems to ruin their lives but were literally at the casino you know coming into the store i worked at saying i have to buy a new shirt because i sweat through my shirt last night when i lost a thousand dollars and i have to go back and win

it back? Do you have a shirt for under $15? You know, like different situation. And I think that puts a lot of this stuff in certain perspectives for me, where it's easier for me to accept my own more healthy relationships with those, even if I don't. want to like shout out the new gotcha i'm playing if i'm playing if i happen to be playing one at a given at any given point um but at the same time that experience has made me very familiar with

how easy it is to get caught in those loops, you know, how desperate you can get to get the thing you really want, how important it can feel, you know. Working in that card game shop, there are so many times when someone would just like, come in. with their extra 20 bucks that week drop it on some magic cards not get and you could tell it like ruin their night you know um and so it's it's wild to see that that whole

like, attitude towards your hobby spread so widely so quick over the last five years. Yeah, and I feel like, you know, the reason why the Lububu... Things sort of like just lit a fire in my brain, even just going through the experience and feeling like, oh, I...

This doesn't feel good to me. Like, I realize, like, I want to hit the button again that says, buy now until I get this motorcycle. But, like, I have been so... So I had, over the summer, I... was watching like card opening videos for the first time because of some of the um final fantasy magic sets yeah and the like the the the realizing that like you know as these

As these things are around these sorts of hobbies, and as you're getting into content creation, and as you're getting into your only ability to... participate in this hobby or to be a content creator in the scene is to literally spend money to be able to to to go into it so like you know the the idea that you're watching you know somebody's watching a

200,000 view card opening pack and this guy spent $2,000 and he's going through all of them and you want to be a card opening YouTuber, how much do you feel like you have to spend to be a novice, to get somewhere in this thing that you... want to be a part of and like the you know the the the fact that like

the investments come from emotional places like that. And, you know, you know, the libu comes from emotional police too. It's like the societal pressure. It's this thing that people are wanting to get for those kids. It's they want to get multiple ones for their kids.

Like part of why I wanted to talk about with the Tamagotchi Uni and the customization options is like what you're seeing people do is like really care for these things in a way that like I'm going to match up with my outfit today. I'm going to buy a little outfit for it. You know, it's going to be.

it has my little guy yeah yeah and you know like the this the like the you know the the only way to show appreciation for these things or to find a community in this way or to introduce yourself into a hobby is is to go there and spend money and then just keep spending money to keep doing it and it's just like you know

I just got really into Tamagotchis when I admitted that I didn't, you know, as a kid, I was like, that's kind of fine. And from there, I was like, those designs are really cute. And, you know, I did my research. I decided which devices I wanted. I kind of ended up deciding that I wanted to compare two.

of them and i spent the money that they charged me you know and you know in and out you didn't have to write yeah i mean we didn't even get into like like i go into a store by uni because i have one of the only bandai stores in the country right x amount of minutes from me if i did this and i was somewhere else and i had to pay 140 online we wouldn't have an episode you know what i mean like you know so it's

It's just, it's tough. It's tough to be in the world, man. The thing is, it's not like it's hard to imagine alternatives to some of what this is, right? Because like... You're talking about accessorizing with a labubu, right? Accessorizing doesn't require blind boxes. People have been accessorizing and will continue to accessorize forever. And so you have to then look at the kind of commerce model around it and say...

Is this the best way to enable people to do the thing that they really want to do? And part of what they want to do is open a blind box, right? But the second that it is... You know, you take a think of the other half of that, which is just I want to get something to customize my look. That does not require all of the other stuff, which is why, like, you know, in card games. it's been 15 years of people realizing well we could just sell the set as the set

the new set can drop and we can sell a lot of the fantasy flight games did this for a long time. Like the, here is every card in the set and maybe you want doubles. And so you're going to buy the set twice or whatever, but like, you're not. just going to keep buying new packs indefinitely. We're not going to rake you over the coals in that particular way. And I think for me, that's a good example of coming at these things from the perspective that is like...

No one's going to stop gambling. No one is going to stop buying things without knowing what they're buying necessarily. The kind of blind box or gotcha style thing. Those aren't going anywhere. And, you know, outside of, like, huge regulatory change that seems out of reach, you know, even places like the EU and China, which have had new regulations get put in place around this style of thing, have been regulations about...

being clear about percentage chances, showing exactly what you can get, limiting who has access to it or how many times per day you can do it. But they're not. full bans, as far as I know, around these things. And so... There's also sometimes a thing where they'll be like, on average, it would cost this amount to get this. That's right. They'll give you two prices. If you're super lucky, if you're super unlucky. Right. Totally.

you know, I would like even maybe stronger than that even, but where it comes from is like, okay, we know people are going to keep doing this. How do we make sure that inside of that scenario where people are going to keep doing this? How do we make it as clean and clear and make it be the best possible experience for people who want to continue doing this?

as possible without it being, you know, something that they could like ruin their lives over. And I think that's a perfectly fair way to come about talking about this stuff. You know, I don't think it's dismissive of the desire to want to.

open a gotcha pack and see the fun you know see the the sick animation when you get a five star or you know open up the blind box and be like oh holy shit i got the one where kirby is a chef you know like i want that i want to continue getting the chef kirby you know but

I mean, that's, you know, that's, I think, a good example is that, like... you know you're talking about the the kirby room remant collection and like the way that we experienced that was like you and me and jack and kb each got one and we opened them up and they connect so we connected the little rooms and like we did in that scenario if i had been really unhappy with the bathroom one which i certainly was not

It's within arm's reach of me right now. If I'd been really unhappy with the bathroom one and really jealous of the birthday party room one, which I kind of don't understand, then I could have been like... hey do you do you want to swap i kind of i really like yours but i don't you know like there's there's room where like when you are hat when you're sharing you can you can have those, those activities and have them socially in a way that isn't like extremely gross.

You know, where it's like, it's a shared activity. Everyone's got one. You swap things around. Like, you know, it's an experience of like, and then that becomes. not just one in a pile but that becomes like oh yeah that's the that's the kirby that i got um like with my friends or whatever yeah with my friends like it sort of adds a little bit of something into what is otherwise kind of by design a lineup of interchangeable plastic things yeah yeah simple as that yeah

Any other final thoughts on this stuff? Do you want to say this very petty thing you've written?

No, no. I would rather really quickly talk about the virtual pet that I got. Oh, please. Oh, my God. I completely forgot. I'm so sorry. I completely forgot. What's it called? It's called... Punirunas? Punirunes? Okay. I'm watching it. I don't know. It's... So I was looking at... Allie had mentioned the Tamagotchi stuff, and I was looking at them.

And the Paradise was, the release for it was really fucked up here. It was just not available easily. And even more so the uni. And I was like, well, it's really nice in these things when we're able to... have something where like at least a couple people have played it or something similar and they can have the you know so i found something else

And it was something that on the Tamagotchi Reddit, people seemed to really like. So I was like, okay, if the Tamagotchi fans like a non-Tamagotchi thing, then maybe it's good. And the thing is called Punirunus. I don't know. There's an anime or something attached to it. I don't know. And it's like a big, it's much bigger than a Tamagot. It's not much bigger, but it's big. It's a big round thing. And there's a hole in the side.

And the whole thing about it is you put your finger in the hole. And inside the hole, there's like a little... It's a joystick, but it's covered with like a kind of slightly sticky silicone kind of nub. It's kind of a button, but it feels like a little... Whoops, I woke it up. A little like slime ball. um oh it feels like slime it's not like furry or even like this sort of rubber texture of like a dog's nose

No. Well, I just thought it would feel like a pet. Yeah, like a little wet, like a dog's nose. The thing about it is that it's a slime. it's it's it's all like it starts out as a little slime ball you feed it food you buy food and then you turn the food into slime you like slimify the food and then feed it the food um if it's uh

When its room gets dirty, you use it to clean up. Like when you're cleaning your keyboard with keyboard cleaning slime or whatever. And then you give it a bath to clean it. I see. There's the whole like... How you're leveling it up and stuff is these little slime balls. When it is... Are you feeding it by reaching in and touching it?

Yes. When you feed it, you reach in and you push the food down onto it. It puts the food above and you reach your finger in. Oh, I see. I should say, when you put your finger in the hole, there's a sensor in the hole that knows you've put your finger in. And when you start...

it lets you pick the skin color of your finger because you see your finger that's fun not your finger you see a finger yeah you see a cartoon finger yeah it's you see the finger go in and then the little guy like looks up like huh um So when you're feeding it, you push the food down and then he eats it. When you're cleaning the room, you are rubbing the little button around and cleaning up that way.

You can pet it or you can push it down hard for the various minigames that involve pounding mochi or jumping around. There's a rhythm game one. And also, when it's... sick or when you don't feed it or whatever, it melts. The way that slime melts when you just leave it unattended for too long. And you have to massage it back to life. Now I understand.

yeah and you sort of get to pick the direction in which it evolves so it's not it's not too happenstance um so i started with a little yellow blob and i evolved it into this like slime elephant kind of guy. And then I put a little hat on him. These are really cute. And then afterwards, once they're adults and stuff, you can release them and you start anew with a new little slime guy.

There's, as far as I can tell, no connectivity to anything at all. Just a cute little guy you can pet. Is this pre or post YouTube slime? Oh, great question. This is post-YouTube Slime. This is, like, a recent toy. Okay. And, like, YouTube Slime is old enough now that you get adults who are like, slime nostalgia, I'm getting slime again. Right. YouTube slime, someone who grew up on YouTube slime could buy one of these with their own money.

right yeah i mean like the the slime monster um is obviously not a new thing they've been doing this since the 60s and 70s but the idea of like this is your slime that you take care of and you kind of touch and wiggle it is like that's youtube

i know what that means it's cute um the thing the thing that made me think like oh this is definitely not just like this is not just like dragon dragon quest slime type shit this is youtube slime was the thing of like okay i left it overnight and forgot to feed it and i i opened it up this morning it's just a pool of goo and i have to like reactivate it like literally i have to reactivate to get it back to being a guy again yeah okay that said they should get the dragon quest slimes

as a crossover they should do they're gonna do a sanrio one apparently um that ali linked me to but yeah the the like nubbin inside i keep like having this thought of like should i get a flashlight and look in there um because the hole is it's you know it's it's deep and like when you're when you're playing with it if you keep your finger inside it gets a little bit like humid because it's like plastic um and it's like

gross and weird um but the the the uh the button cover material is like i'm trying to think of like what an analog for this is it's not like a rubberized thing because that's not sticky It's kind of, I don't know, it's... Is it like those like slap hands that would like stick to a thing and then sort of slowly fall away? It's not quite that sticky and it's a little more firm, but it's a similar kind of thing. Like there is a slight amount of stick to it.

in a way that's like yeah I had looked at someone talking about these and they said that like it is a dust magnet so if you go to their Etsy store they sell whole covers for it which is really like okay i'm a sucker for a device that's bizarre as hell um like the thing that was most appealing to me about the paradise was that wheel on the side uh it's interesting to see things like that kind of like the the playdate crank and things like that kind of weird little tactile elements

being added into toys where for the longest time the advancement was oh there's a touch screen which is the complete absence of tactile elements i know yeah i so the the play date thing is really something that uh appeal to the paradise with me and i was i was sort of wondering like you know if i'm bandai that would sort of be on my radar though but i you know i don't know um the the like the only thing that i've seen uh with tamagotchi that gets anywhere even close to that is that the

Tamagotchi picks, which... is real novelty was that it had a picture inside it obviously um but instead of having physical buttons it had like touch buttons and i've seen people say like oh i really like the pics because i felt like i had such a better bond with my pet

because it had this sort of like swipe function because the buttons were touch where you would like swipe through mini games and like also pet your pet, which you've never been able to do in a Tamagotchi. So people are like, oh, I feel like...

i'm so much closer to it even though like the the conceit around that game is that like your pet is has a randomized number of games that it can play per day and you can make it play two and depending on that is the job that it gets at the end of your cycle and like it ends up moving out It's really weird. Is there any like, is there any parenting or like gene stuff with that one? Or is it just like, what's the, the, the like selection process for.

choosing an elephant guy versus um it was a little confusing uh when it's ready to evolve it sort of presents you with like a bunch of options like okay okay yellow blue red um or like you know it's it's sort of a tree type thing um So I picked, I think, yellow, and then I picked blue, and then it became like the elephant. So you are specifically choosing your path there. You're not like... going i thought for a bit that it was going to be like oh well okay when i'm slimifying this food

To slimify it correctly, I have to use two yellow slimes. So I'm going to put two yellow slimes into this food and then cook it. And then if I feed it a lot of yellow slime food, maybe it'll become like yellow. And it's like, no, just choose.

You want to see different stuff. Just choose. Just see what you want to do. Which I oddly I think like in terms of picking one of these for someone who just wants to have a thing to like poke at literally or figuratively from time to time um it's it's very appealing because it's just like yeah i don't want to have to worry about like

what i'm doing in a way that like oh well now it's going to be like a doctor or whatever um i just want to like pet my little guy on the head yeah uh and then like you know do a very simple platform and game and then feed him a jellified pretzel and then we both call it a night, you know? You know what? Cheers, I'll drink to that. God.

Well, thank you for the slime update. Thank you for Allie, the Tamagotchi update and etc. I think we've done one of these without a break. I think we just, we didn't really hit a break point. And so we just did it. I wanted to talk about this stuff for so bad that I've been talking to myself in my apartment for three days. I just want to put that out there. Wow.

preparing for the show yeah you were ready to go you had it down a hundred percent uh so i think that's probably the end of the episode janine you and i can talk about on another episode we have to Fuck. I'll bleep it. I'll bleep it. I'll bleep it. I'm doing the edit.

so i was like ready to tie it in too i know same but i we we can't but like there was such a there was such a like oh little i'm not gonna i'm not even saying because then you'd have to bleep out you'd have to bleep it out i have to bleep out the yeah uh-huh so So, and I'm also glad that I did a intro that was about our little collectible guys and not about this other thing that we will talk about in the future. So anyway.

Which also has collectible guise. It does. If you think about it. If you think about it. I'm looking forward to listening to it. All right. I think that is it. As always, you can support us by going to friendsatthetable.cash. Actually, really quick, really, really, really quick. I know, Ali, you have a hard out. I know.

I know. But I do want to say that I am going to probably put a link or an image in the... post about how and why you should call the Visa and MasterCard Stripe and PayPal and voice some some complaints about their recent decisions to put pressure on services, platforms like... Steam and itch that led to the removal of some not safe for work games, along with some some stuff that got caught up in the crossfire because of tagging. Those requirements are draconian.

And, you know, I've spent some time on this podcast being like, we are in the age of the gooner and it's frustrating. Give me good horny games instead of bad ones. I've never said don't put the bad horny games on any of these platforms. And those are, of course. Those aren't even the games that are getting pulled. Stellar Blade continues to be sold. Games that have no interest in sexuality, but simply want to produce bodies to look at.

Those continue to be sold as long as what they're not doing is, for instance, having any sex in them. Irritating Australian transphobes. That's right. Yes, exactly. The Australian transphobes. Say it. don't care about stellar blade uh they do care about limiting the broad range of human sexuality into something uh that is uh limiting boring and fascistic you know um not fetishistic

Which I'm good with, actually. So, yeah, I'll have some resources there. I wanted to make sure we gave time to this thing that folks are excited to talk about and not just, like, dive in headfirst on the same episode. to where we had a very limited, like I said, alley of a heart out right now. So, but I do want to provide those resources and lend our voices to that. I think we all know people who are in that space, who make porn games, who make erotic games, who make queer games.

who have been hit by this or who fear that their future work will be hit by this. I think that work is imperative. And I think that that work should be supported, even if it icks you out. And even if you are someone who's not interested in it. It doesn't have to be for you to be important. And it certainly doesn't need to be for you to believe, like, oh, MasterCard should decide what gets sold. Fundamentally, I think...

There are lots of great conversations to have about what sorts of sexual content should be on platforms. I'm fine with having certain conversations around that. I'm definitely fine with having conversations around what tools are available to see what you want to see and what you don't want to see. What I'm not cool with is letting a company that is very clearly pushed around by a religious extremist minority from Australia, you know, to limit the express, the available expressivity.

to queer folks uh around me who i love and care for who want to make cool shit uh even if that means that some people want to make some shit that i don't think is that cool and sell it on the same platforms you know um so simple easy i'll put the the image and the link in the in the description yeah and we i mean we should try to have a follow-up like

broader conversation about this in a future episode but like this is sort of a time sensitive thing so if you see the this these resources like you can take the time out of your day to call about this it makes a difference i mean the reason i have a heart out is to phone bank for the hopeful future mayor of new york city so like fucking putting your time in putting your voice in putting your dollar in you know

This is a very simple way to do that if you feel capable of having the time and the circumstance to sit down and have sort of a polite but firm conversation with a stranger who... is not interested in yelling at you or is not going to argue with you and just going to say, thanks for sharing your opinion. And it's going to go up the, the, the chain and find the chain, you know, what was the thing where like, it was only like,

I think the, the, the, the group that specifically like was behind the recent changes were like, this only took like 300 calls or like a very modest school, like insane number. Yeah. I try not to say insane anymore, but like. literally is like that just is absurd just like totally yeah yeah deeply frustrating so yeah please uh i definitely think It's worth us raising our voices on this. It's definitely worth pushing back on it.

you know, you don't need me to go through all the arguments. The arguments are out there and you should trust the people who are in these spaces in the same way that we should have listened to sex workers who are already anticipating and dealing with these problems for years. None of this stuff should be a surprise to us. If it is.

It should be a suggestion to make sure you listen to some other voices than maybe the ones you already are, because this is stuff that has been on the table and kind of in the wings for a long time. So, yeah, it's worth our time to push back against it. All right. Friendsofthetable.cache is the address to support us. Go to that URL to support us. Friends hyphen table on Blue Sky, or are we just friends table?

Friends hyphen table. I got it right. It's hyphen table. Okay. Hyphen table dot blue sky. That B S K Y dot social to follow us there. We post. about things like our new Outward episode that went up last week. We're continuing to do that. um we have flag merch in the in the shop which at this point you even know who the mysterious flag in the cloak is if you're listening to perpetua let me the soft pitch on on flag stuff even if you don't listen to perpetua

is we are evoking an era of video games where the thing they love to do more than anything was evoke previous eras of video games. That's true. And I think even if you are not in on Perpetua, there is something to appreciate in some of those designs. Just check them out. I also would say, to connect it to our own topic, they're kind of virtual pet coded.

They're definitely Dragon Quest slime coated. I had a bad idea one night where I was like, how hard would it be to make a virtual flag pet thing? i've seen people like a little too hard yeah i've seen people like really start to be like i want to make my own virtual pet and like you know the i think that the coding aspect of it is probably easier that's the device half of it I think it's probably going to be your difficulty there. Sounds hard. Seems hard. Bring back graphing calculators.

Did they go away? Flag for the T1, whatever the fuck. Anyway, yeah. We're done. That's it. That's done. Go listen to Media Club Plus. That's wrapped up. Hunter Hunter is wrapped up. Media Club Plus continues. In fact, Allie, you are on the first new episode of Media Club Plus coming up. Yes. And I am a recurring cast for the season mini that we're doing in between. If you don't know, go find out. Yes. It's exciting. I just said it.

you know go listen to it all right i think that's it please leave us some reviews we're out of time today so i'm gonna let ali go but i'll read some reviews next time i promise until then to be continued