These are very rare and do not seem to have been very successful. I’ve taken the pictures below from a reddit post, which I’ll link to, and most of the information I’ve found about them is from discussions between people who are trying to remember childhood toys. There’s not much official info, but the Wikipedia page for Playmates Toys does list the brand name as one that it owned at some point.
Obviously I’m lacking a lot of info about these toys, and I’ve never seen them pop up for sale anywhere. If you know anything about them or have pictures and/or more, please reach out to me!
It has separate meters for each of the food and drinks, but the happiness indicator is shown in a separate meter via apple icons. He starts with one game as a young bird and will unlock more as he gets older. Penguin-Keeper says its similar in programming to the Gyaoppi pets, but I’m not sure that it’s a complete clone. The overall opinion was that the pet itself is frustrating and bad, though I wonder if having the instructions handy would have made this better, because it seems like a number of its functions are really unintuitive.
This is a 23-in-1 multipet made under the HGL name, owned by Ozbozz (now known as One for Fun), which I found notable because of its unusual form factor. It has five buttons–very unusual for any pet, especially an older one–and based on the instructions, its ROM seems to be somewhat unique. Unfortunately, though, I’ve never seen any pictures of the screens on this one, so if you have one, please contact me.
The instructions are visible in the first photo above, but I have transcribed them for ease of use here:
INSTRUCTION
Pull out the plastic tab before playing. Congratulations! Now you are the owner of this electronic pet. This lovely pet needs your care and attention to grow up healthily. Please read the following instructions carefully to learn how to take good care of the pet.
***Turn the power on***
1. Power: 1.5V x 2
2. Choose the pets
(1) Press A or E key to choose the pets, there are 23 pets available for your choice.
(2) After 8 times flashing, next pet will show up. Pres A, B or C key to stop flashing and press A or C key to display next pet by turns.
(3) Press B key for confirmation
3. Setting the clock
(1) Press B key to enter this mode.
(2) Under clock mode, press A key for setting hour and press B key for minute setting AM/PM will change automatically by change of hour time
(3) After setting, press C key for confirmation.
4. There will be egg image flashing on screen, after stop flashing, the song of "Happy birthday" will be broadcasted to celebrate the birth of new born pet.
* At this stage, the pet is one year old and weight 300 grams
***Manual Instruction***
***
A---SELECT D---CANCEL
B---DECIDE E---SELECT
C---CANCEL
***
Under normal state, press B key to check the clock and press B key again to withdraw.
Press C key to return to the next menu except clock mode.
***Function***
: Feed
Total 3 choices
Staple food/Meal: Four times a day at most
Snack: 10 times a day at most
Water: 10 times a day at most
For each feeing, after the pet having taken food, the weight would increase 10 grams.
The icon of (-*) (*-) means the pet refuse to eat and the pet have eaten too much
: Play game
Choose the game and press B key to enter the game. One melody will be broadcasted and the icon of (-*) (*-) will display. Press A key to make a left movement and press B key to make a right movement. Win the game, one high tune happy melody will broadcast with the icon of 😀` on the screen, otherwise would be a low mood melody and the icon of "🙁"
From high to low, there are totally 9 different mood conditions (from 9VS0 8VS1...1VS8 0VS9)
: Listen to the music
Enter this mode, the icon of ♪☺ will display. Press B key for confirmation, one melody will broadcast following the flickering of the icon. After finish listening one song, the pet will become happy and icon of 😀` will display with the increase of mood index. Press B key to listen to the next song. There are four songs in a cycle.
: Scissor/Fist/Rag
Press A key to choose the game, press B key for confirmation, one song will broadcast. The icon of []< on display. Press A key, the icon of []< will appear, press A key two times, the icon of []( will display, press A key for 3 times, the icon of []0 will display. Press B key for confirmation, the other party will dhow the scissor, fist and rag by random, press C key to withdraw.
Win the game, a high tune melody will broadcast with the icon of 😀` on the screen, otherwise there will be a low mood melody with the icon of "🙁" display
From high to low, there are totally 9 different mood conditions (from 9VS0 8VS1...1VS8 0VS9)
: Dancing
Under hungry state (namely both the mean and snack show zero), the pet will refuse to dance. Enter this mode, the icon of 🦶 will display, press B key for confirmation, one song will broadcast and the icon will ficker up and down. After finish of the song, the pet will become very happy and the icon of 😀` will display, at this time, the index of mood will increase. Continue dancing for 3 times, the index of mood will increase one level more. Press B to dance for next song.
There are 4 songs in a cycle.
: Cleaning
After the pet have a bowel movement, the weight would reduce 30 grams and the icon of 💩 would be flickering as well as the pet. Choose cleaning function, the icon of 😀` will display. Before you clean the excrement, Play Game and Feed will not function (namely Feed, Play Game, Listen to the music, Scissor/Fist/Rag and Dancing will all stop functioning), you can only check the Progress, Time and Sleeping. If there is no excrement and you choose cleaning function, the pet will shake its head to refuse.
: Injection
Take injection function to treat the pet when the icon of 💀 display, which means the pet got sick. When the pet is given an injection, the icon of "🙁" will display and will change into 😀` and the icon of 💀 will disappear after finish injection. If choose the injection function while the pet is healthy, the pet will shake head to refuse injection.
: Progress
Press A key once, check the index of food and health condition, the icon of [food and heart meter icon] will display
Press A key twice, check the sleep and work status, the icon of [meters with Zz and pencil next to them] will display
Press A key again, check the mood index, the icon of [undistiguishable] will display.
: Sleeping
Enter this mode, the icon of [⏰🌑] will display. Press A key to change the direction of the arrowhead, press B key to choose the night and kay. Choose night, the pet will go to sleep until you choose day function. Under sleeping state, all other functions will stop except checking the progress and clock.
: Shouting Alert
When your pet needs something, it will alarm you by shouting. Check the status to see what it wants. When the index of healthiness is on half level, the pet will get sick; if index drop to zero or the weight is below 40 grams, the pet would die. Win the game, the mood index will increase one level more, otherwise will decrease. Listen to the music and dancing will increase mood index one level more. Continue dancing for 3 times, the health index will increase one level more. When the pet is hungry, it will refuse to dance.
* following the increase of each age, the weight of pet will add 300 grams automatically.
Nyko, which is still around and makes gaming peripherals, made the Comet Critters series. These days the “Kid Comet” is the one that shows up on eBay all the time, to the point at which I thought that the others had never been made. Worthpoint actually has a few photos of them, though, so apparently they’re just very rare. That said, the only one I have and have been able to run is the Kid Comet model, so as of now I don’t yet have any info about the others.
The ones I have seen are clones of other generic pets.
Kid Comet
This is a very difficult pet to run. Its programming comes from the Johnny Alien ROM, and is beyond frustrating. It’s VERY picky about just about everything, and even when I thought I was doing fine, it would still go and die on me. Needless to say, it doesn’t take much neglect at all, and its meters need to be kept high at all times. I gave up after about four attempts to raise one past its second stage.
Functions
Feeding – Meal and dessert
Lights
Game – This is a guessing game that happens to be a variant of the Left-right game
Exercise – can be done at all stages of growth
Medicine
Cleaning – Poop only, no showering
Stats
Education – basically a discipline function, but it is done in response to false calls.
Attention icon – unselectable
Go for walk – This seems to function as a temporary, hour-long pause. The instructions warn you not to use it if the pet’s mood is too low, or they’ll wander off and not come back.
Johnny Alien doing some exercise repsOne of the meters for the petAge and weightThis is the pet at a young stageHealth meterTurning the lights on and offIntelligence meterHunger meterHealth barFeeding menu
Based on the game series Sakura Taisen, a combination dating sim/RPG, this pet has the same form factor as the Pikachu and Hello Kitty pets, but the game play is slightly more complex. With this pet, you will take care of the titular character Sakura, and you accumulate points by walking. These points can be used to play mini games or use the items she has. As you walk, the pet will chose a destination from the show to travel to, and you must help her get there by adding steps. Once she arrives, she can perform various activities and will sit and have some tea. The pet will collect the people and places you have met, and you can scroll through them and see what you’ve collected. Also, like the Pocket Pikachu 2, this pet contains an IR port that can communicate with its corresponding GBA game.
Now in color! The gameplay on this one is largely similar to the first, but it is now in color and includes a few extra functions. There is an additional high-low card game included, and the case has an IR meant to connect to the GBC pokemon games. Apparently this enables the player to send gifts to the pokemon in game by spending the watts you have accumulated while walking. The card game is a card guessing game: Pikachu will hold up a card with a value on it, and you must guess whether the next one will be lower or higher. If you guess correctly, you get to keep the watts you have or keep playing, while if you lose, you’ll forfeit all of the watts you’ve gained so far.
Note that although the pet is in color, it’s got that washed-out quality to the colors in all the screenshots I’ve seen, so I don’t think it’s backlit. This matches what was going on with the GameBoy Colors at the time, which were universally hard to see and play on until they came out with the backlit Game Boy Advance model later.
Serebii.net article – This article doesn’t go super into depth for the functions, but it’s got some excellent pictures. Scroll down to the bottom to see gifs of a ton of recreated animations from this device.
This pet has the same form factor as the Pocket Pikachu pedometer, and also functions as a pedometer as well. Many of its features are the same as the Pocket Pikachu, but it also features a game called “Kitty’s Forest” that works similarly to the Arukundesu pets, albeit very simplified. I’ve archived the instructions from TamaSquare, which have more details.
This particular pet doesn’t have a whole lot of interactivity compared to other pets, but it does have a large variety of animations. In it you take care of Pikachu by collecting “volts,” which are basically the number of steps you’ve taken. You can also potentially increase the number of volts you have using a slot machine game (which I’ve never been able to master). As you gain more volts, you can give them as gifts to Pikachu, and whether or not he’s happy with the gift depends on how large it is. The more you give, the happier he becomes. As you walk around with him throughout the day, he’ll engage in different activities, including showering, eating, riding a bike or motorcycle, running, and brushing his teeth. He goes to bed on his own and night and will wake up on his own the next morning.
The lack of activities this one has can be a bit disappointing, but the graphics are very cute.
This is a music pet that works similarly to the Sony Funbbit–it attaches to your headphones, and dances to the music you play, which will also affect the type of pet that it grows into. The Otoizm also has IR capability which lets it talk to other Otoizm devices.
User Armouros on Tumblr uploaded scans of the instruction manual because they are awesome and proof that people are basically good inside. It’s shared via Dropbox in that post, so I’m archiving it here:
