Japan Scrambles for Chicken Game

TOKYO —  Even in Japan, where getting the latest gadgets is a point of pride for savvy shoppers, the craze set off by a new hand-held chicken video game is hard to fathom.

On Sunday morning, hundreds of people showed up at a large toy store in downtown Tokyo, carrying the vouchers they had received for the toy after waiting in line for hours the day before.

Known as the Tamagotch, or “cute little egg,” the toy is a key-chain computer game about the size and shape of an egg. On the display screen, an egg hatches and a chicken is born as the game begins. The owner then uses three tiny buttons to feed, play with, clean up after and discipline it.

Paying $18 for the hard-to-get toy, children skipped off laughing, knowing they would be the envy of their schoolmates. Some of the adults buying it looked sheepish.

“I will bring this toy to my office and be proud of it because my colleagues don’t have it yet,” Takeshi Ogiwara, 27, a computer programmer, said outside the Hakuhinkan Toy Park store.

After a pause, he added: “I probably will have to stop working and rush into the men’s room to secretly care for my chicken.”

The video game can go on for several days if the chicken is cared for properly and grows. But owners who forget to feed it, will hear a loud “peep, peep, peep” of complaint. A chicken ignored will grow sickly and angry-looking. Eventually, it will die of neglect, ending the game.

There are dozens of key-chain video games on the market in Japan. But Bandai Co., the Japanese toy maker that also makes Power Rangers, stole the show when it introduced Tamagotch in November. Bandai has sold as many as 500,000 of them, and though stores have repeatedly run out.

The “cute little egg” has sold for hundreds of dollars on the black market, and one small shop in Tokyo held a drawing to sell its limited stock.

“Most of my friends don’t have this toy yet, but everyone has heard about it,” said teenager Takashi Ran, who bought a Tamagotch on Sunday.

“I won’t bring it to school, and my mother will have to take care of it at home Monday because I’m afraid that other students will steal it from me,” he said.

Mami Ogata, 35, said she decided she wanted the toy after seeing so many secretaries playing with it at the offices where she delivered flowers.

Tamagotch is Japan’s biggest hit in years.

“There has never been a toy we’ve sold that has been this popular, this crazy,” said Yoshifumi Itoh, vice president of the Hakuhinkan Toy Park.

The store has repeatedly run out of the toys. When word leaked out that it had received a new shipment Thursday, nearly 2,000 people showed up. Many slept outside the store through the cold, winter night so they could buy the toy Friday morning.

“I’ve never seen anything like that,” Itoh said.