A dog’s bark is picked up from a small microphone on his collar and echoed to the main device (using a process called Sound Forwarding), the sound is analyzed, and the voice translation is displayed on the screen.

Dr. Norio Kogure, director of Kogure Animal Hospital, provided expert advice on animal behavior. Sounds are divided into six categories: happy, sad, frustrated, angry, assertion, and desire. You can even record your dogs emotions while you are gone.

Bowlingual has a datanalysis feature that compiles information on your dog over time to improve communication, and form a “doggie diary.”

It allows you to enter the dog’s name, breed, gender and birth date to improve the translation. In addition it provides training tips, offers health advice, and includes a timer.

Bowlingual was later sold in an English version in the U.S. for about $120.

With Bowlingual being a big hit, Takara followed up with a similar product for cats. Meowlingual was announced in a 1 December 2003 press release.

Bowlingual was a tremendous success in Japan and received and almost unbelievable amount of publicity in the United States. Millions of people own dogs and were fascinated with the concept of a device interpreting their barks. Hundreds of publications ran brief articles about the device when it was first released.

We are still working on our efforts to write a history of virtual pets. As part of that effort we are trying to understand how all the different types fit in with one another, with real life and with other things that may have influenced them. Bowlingual and Meowlingual play an interesting role, as they are two of the few objects to go back the other way. They use small handheld electronic devices very reminiscent of keychain virtual pets to interact with real life, vs. real life interacting with a virtual pet.

They are much more rounded in appearance than the early pets. We include a photo here of the original Digital Doggie from the early days for comparison. You can see considerable difference in the styles.

Pets include Dragon Lizard, Bunny, Pixie (sort of like Tinker Bell), Scorpion and Tomcat.

More power hungry than the earlier versions, the new units require three LR44 batteries.

Hasbro also has an optional TV game controller called Giga Pets Explorer that allows you play with three more virtual pets on your television, and explore Giga Island. Plus you can plug in one of your Giga Pets to play with it directly on the TV screen. One of the packages indicates they have a Panda, Monkey, and Pooch as the three online games and it looks like they are selling it with a mouse for the handheld pet. Instructions for Giga Pet Explorer are online.

The old Giga Pet Digital Doggie is shown below for comparison with the current pets. Welcome back Giga Pets!

The series includes a cat, mouse, bunny, hamster, monkey, bird, duck, frog, and an iguana. Each pet includes about 30 games to play.

When you finish an activity you get virtual stickers for your pet’s digital diary.

You feed and brush them using the special tools.

The examples shown here are the cat (top) and the mouse.

Hasbro has posted the basic instructions for Littlest Pet Shop Digital Pets online.

These digital pets are an outgrowth of the Littlest Pet Shop line of small physical collectible pets and playsets, mostly targeting young girls introduced by Hasbro in early 2005 (see 18 Feb 2005 press release).  In early 2006 they added the digital pets (see 9 Feb 2006 press release). The brand continued to do well and they have continued to expand. In June 2007 Hasbro announced they would start licensing the brand, and expand even further from their backpacks, t-shirts, stationery, and game books. They are looking more products for tween girls including costume jewelry, hair accessories, watches, a new cell phone, pens, greeting cards, calendars, candy, valentines, etc.

The brand is supported by its own web site, Littlest Pet Shop.

You keep your partner happy by buying them gifts, giving them compliments, taking them out on dates, and doing things with them.

If you want to dump them, give them bad presents and insult them.

It takes two LR44 batteries just like Tamagotchi did.

This game is NOT suitable for children.

Photo from Firebox.com

We still have some and may use them as prizes in surveys and contests here when we get the blog a little more established.

More info on the magazine is available on a page titled, Virtual Pet Secrets Magazine, over on the Virtual Pet Home Page.

Looking back through it, one thing I am going to do, is write a History of Virtual Pets following up and expanding on the nice history published in Virtual Pet Secrets written by Robert Worne. I have since collected several earlier items and documents, as well as hundreds on the development of virtual pets over the last decade.