The History of Digimon

Digimon - The Truth IV
The History of Digimon
Digimon started in Japan and dates back to the early to mid 1900's. In Japan children usually live in apartments and do not own pets. Therefore Bandai Japan created a virtual pet called Tamagotchi, Japanese for Egg. Tamagotchi, Tama for short, was a small semi-egg shaped mini-computer with three buttons under its LCD screen. A person who had a Tama would raise it from and egg and as it grew it would change forms depending on how well one took care of it. One would feed, play with, discipline, and clean up after his Tama. This quickly became a great success. Children all over Japan would line up for hours to buy a Tama, over and over again. This was such a great hit, and struck a chord with children that Bandai America decided to release an American version of the Tama.
Meanwhile back in Japan Bandai created a new version of the Tama called Digital Monsters or Digimon. Digimon was also a virtual pet; however, Digimon was targeted more for boys. Instead of cute plant and chick like creatures, Digimon sported more scary looking monsters. Digimon also had connectors on it's top where two people could connect their Digimon together for a battle, the better Digimon, however, not always winning. This also was a very big success. In fact Digimon became such a large fad that more versions of Digimon were created.
Tamagotchi became a success quickly in the U.S. as well, though fading in popularity much sooner than expected. When Digimon was first released in New York December 1997 it sparked much excitement, though just as a spark Digimon quickly faded in the U.S. This left Bandai U.S. to dispose of many Tamas and Digimon. To the best of Bandai's knowledge the American Digimon was dead.
Digimon in Japan however grew into a booming market; four more versions of the original Digimon were designed. Later a new kind of Digimon was created. It was called Digimon Pendulum and it had a special device where you could train your Digimon by shaking it. Eight versions of Digimon Pendulum (Digimon P) were made. Also made were: Play Station games, a TV Show, a Digimon virtual pet based on the show, several movies, a card game, figurines, and an endless amount of shwag.
When the Digimon TV show began a Pokemon TV series had already been produced and was playing in Japan, and also turned out to be very popular as a U.S show. August 1999 brought the return of Digimon in the U.S. with the premier of the Digimon series Digimon: Digital Monsters. Digimon quickly became more popular than its premier two years earlier. Bandai announced a new line of Digimon toys, a virtual pet called DigiVice, playing cards, trading cards, a Play Station game, and many more objects with the Digimon logo, all for the U.S. consumers. Digimon became such a great craze that in May of 2000 beat out Pokemon, the largest Anime fad of that time, head to head in the first week of ratings. By the beginning of the summer Digimon was out selling all other Anime (Japanese animation) and a new Digimon movie was being created.
Digimon continues to grow deifying odds by continuing up the charts and bringing more and more fans in every weekend. With its second season fresh on Fox Kids in the U.S. and the fad in Japan still going strong the extent of Digimon will not be known for some time.