If you were in elementary school during the late 90s and early 2000s, the word Tamagotchi likely conjures vivid memories of playing with the palm-sized devices at recess, or sneakily checking on your digi-pet during class.
But, at some point, you probably laid your tiny pixelated companion to rest in a scarcely touched drawer and forgot about it.
However, that wasn’t quite the case for the world’s first-ever Tamagotchi Club founder, Toronto-based Twoey Gray, her friend and club meet-up co-host William Maneja or, as it turns out, many, many other people.
In 2022, Gray was traversing a mental hellscape, so to ease her mind she popped outside for a leisurely bike ride. But she kept going, for 60 days in fact, until finally hitting the brakes 3,000 kilometers away in Halifax, NS.
Armed with only a tent and her Tamagotchi, Gray peddaled her way to the east coast, sleeping in graveyards and farmer’s fields, and collecting a handful of new friends along the way.
Gray told Now Toronto that her Tamagotchi became an unlikely companion. It kept her occupied when she was alone and often facilitated spontaneous social interactions with curious passersby.
Strangers would excitedly approach her and ask if that was really a Tamagotchi she was playing on, which is ultimately what inspired her, upon her return to Toronto, to start a Tamagotchi club.
To spread the word, Gray began plastering posters around Toronto about the meet-up.
December 11, 2022, marked the club’s first-ever in-person meeting in Allen Gardens, where they still meet bi-monthly, almost two years later.
At the first meeting was a man named William Maneja, who rediscovered his love for Tamagotchis during the pandemic, when he was compelled to open that scarcely visited drawer.
He put a battery in a Tamagotchi he still had from his teen years and started playing regularly.
“It reignited this love for me,” he told Now Toronto, which prompted Maneja to start a Tamagotchi Instagram account. About a year later he got a DM from Gray, asking if he wanted to attend the first club meeting.
Not long after, Tamagotchi in tow, Maneja was on his way to Allen Gardens.
“So I go to the first meet-up, not knowing what to expect..it was like, you think you’re the only one out there,” Maneja explained.
Until Gray started the club she hadn’t realized how many people still played with Tamagotchis, or were interested in playing with them. She thought she was “the only one,” Gray told Now.
“So I have my Tamagotchi around my neck, ” Maneja continued, “and then I see this girl walking by with a Tamagotchi…and then she’s like ‘hey are you here for Tamagotchi club?’.”
Sure enough, it was Gray.
The first time around, eight to ten people showed up, but now meet-ups attract about 50 people each time, and chapters have popped up all over the world thanks to Twoey.
Tamagotchi clubs now exist in Japan, Arizona, Arkansas, Atlanta, Vancouver, Ottawa, Victoria, and many other places around the world.
Gray described the meet-ups as an opportunity to “connect over a shared language of play, ” which it turns out is spoken across generations.
Meet-ups attract all age groups, and Gray has noticed a renewed interest in the toy from younger folks too.
For Maneja, who recently went back to school to study social services, the Tamagotchi club has been a constant that has helped improve his mental health.
Maneja says the gameplay, with its manageable and simple set-up, and the social interactions he has at meet-ups, provide him with a sense of relief from everyday life.
“Tamagotchi helped me to look forward to each day…. It has a lifespan of its own. So each day it grows, each day it changes. And it’s the cycle that kind of reminds people who play it, that life goes on, but you can still keep on trying anyway.”
