| Screen | Monochrome |
| Shell colors | White/custom |
| Manufacturer | Nelsonic |
| Pet type | Basic |
| Programming | Custom |
| Release year | Unknown |
These pets are (at this time) generally easy to find secondhand, and come in two form factors: keychains, and as a watch. Nelsonic is much more widely known for their wrist watches, so it makes sense that they would have sold this particular toy with a watch strap.
Either way, though, the programming is likely the same. This is a simple, pleasant little dog pet that has some unique sprites, but otherwise is not too complicated and fairly easy to run. The sprites are all very simple and at the same time very cute, and my puppy seems to enjoy rolling around on his back across the screen a lot. The meters don’t seem to want to go above 3 at younger stages, although there are five total, which is similar to the original Tamas, which won’t go above 2 or 3 until they’re out of the baby stage. The game featured is the standard left/right game, but it will increase the meter whether you win or not, which is nice. There is also an “education” option, but I was unable to get it to do anything useful during my run, so I’m unsure what it seems to be needed for.
I bought two of these in pretty good condition, though they’re both missing some paint. So this may be particular to my models, but these screens are remarkably clear and easy to read given the pets’ age. The icons are clearly distinguished, and I haven’t had any trouble at all with the buttons. I actually did take them apart to clean them when they first arrived, and the hardware inside these is very simple–in fact, they don’t even have a dedicated battery cover; you just take the entire back off of the pet in order to change the battery out! Because of this, the sound does seem to lose contact with the wires frequently, and sometimes just won’t beep at all, but since the pet doesn’t die that easily, I didn’t find this to be a huge issue.
I will say sometimes it’s difficult to tell what the pet wants. Since it doesn’t beep consistently, the alerts seem to come in randomly, and sometimes when I think it’s calling about poop or food, the attention icon will stay lit on the screen even after caring for it. So I’ve gotten to where I just run through the usual menus–food, game, medicine, cleaning, etc–and eventually the alert goes away.
I haven’t really found much use for the weather option yet. I have seen the weather icon change a few time from a sun to…something that looks like a bag (maybe that means it’s windy)?…but the pup never seems to have any alerts that are satisfied by changing the clothing option, so as far as I know, it’s just for show.
All in all I haven’t had too many complaints about this pet. It’s certainly very cheaply made, and I did find some part confusing, but that’s probably because I wasn’t able to get any instructions with mine, so I can’t really blame that on the programming.
Menu
- Stats: Age, weight, Food meter (shown with squares under the bone icon), happiness meter (shown with squares under heart), education meter (squares under “ABC” icon), weather
- Food: bone/candy
- Game: left/right game
- Unselectable alert
- Education
- Shower
- Clothing (for weather)
- Light
- Medicine
- Discipline
