Its inventor was Aki Maita, a 31-year-old Japanese woman who worked for Bandai, the company that marketed it in 1996. But before that, she gave Tamagotchi prototypes to 200 teenagers she found on the streets of Tokyo's Shibuya district in exchange for a satisfaction survey.
In the West, the Tamagotchi had an important place in the market until around 2008, although in Spain it ended its era years earlier, in 2004. The peak of these electronic pets was in 1999, when it reached the figure of some 40 million units sold.