The egg-shaped virtual pet that took over backpacks and desk drawers in the late 1990s is rolling into Columbus this weekend, as Tamagotchi's 30th anniversary tour bus parks itself at Polaris Fashion Place for a free, two-day pop-up. The Tamagotchi USA Road Trip sets up on the mall's lower level near Von Maur at 1500 Polaris Pkwy., with hands-on activities, photo opportunities, and a life-sized poop-sweep cleanup game meant to test just how well fans can handle real virtual-pet chores.
According to The Columbus Dispatch, the free interactive pop-up runs Saturday from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. and Sunday from noon to 6 p.m., with a dedicated shop selling special-edition merchandise alongside the immersive activities. The stop marks the second consecutive year Bandai has sent a Tamagotchi road trip tour across the country, and Columbus joins a list of major retail hubs on the 2026 itinerary, including Minneapolis's Mall of America and Indianapolis's Greenwood Park Mall earlier this month, according to Bandai.
Three Decades From Tokyo to Polaris
Tamagotchi first launched in Japan on November 23, 1996, before making its way to North American shelves the following May, according to Bandai. The name itself is a mashup of the Japanese word tamago, meaning egg, and uotchi, meaning watch, per Bandai. What began as a simple digital pet quickly became one of the defining toys of the 1990s, and its cultural footprint was significant enough that creators Akihiro Yokoi and Aki Maita were awarded the satirical Ig Nobel Prize in Economics in October 1997, with the citation crediting them for diverting millions of work hours into virtual pet care, according to Improbable Research.
That runaway popularity had a rocky side, too. Bandai suffered a loss of roughly 6 billion yen, or about $38 million, after overestimating demand and disposing of 2.5 million unsold Tamagotchi units when consumer interest suddenly cooled and retailers returned unsold stock, according to Time Extension.
From Monochrome Screens to Cellular Zoom
The brand's modern comeback looks a lot more calculated. Bandai Namco reported that Tamagotchi surpassed 100 million cumulative units shipped worldwide since 1996, with Japan accounting for 49% of buyers, North America 33%, and Europe 16%, according to Tech in Asia. Global device sales more than doubled between 2022 and 2023 even before Bandai Namco opened dedicated physical retail stores, brand reporting cited by Time Extension shows, with executives crediting modern connectivity features like Wi-Fi for helping reduce player fatigue.
Last August, Bandai Namco released its 37th major device iteration, Tamagotchi Paradise, priced at $44.99 in North America. The device includes a physical zoom dial that lets players inspect their virtual pets across four layers down to cellular biology, and gene-mixing mechanics that enable more than 50,000 creature variations, according to Siliconera. Bandai Namco has also been building out physical retail experiences abroad, opening its first UK Tamagotchi shop inside London's Camden Market in September 2024, per Time Extension.
Adults Are Buying In, Too
The Polaris stop lands amid a broader boom in adult toy buying. U.S. toy sales to adults aged 18 and older grew 18% in the first half of 2025, with adult kidult consumers generating roughly a quarter of all U.S. toy sales, according to Circana market data reported by The Toy Association. A 2025 survey found that 81% of parents planned to buy a toy or game for themselves, the same report notes, underscoring why a 30-year-old virtual pet is drawing both nostalgic millennials and a new generation of younger fans to mall pop-ups like this one.
Polaris Fashion Place, which opened in November 2001 in northern Delaware County, spans 1.28 million square feet with more than 200 stores and four major department store anchors, according to Wikipedia. The mall sits within the 1,200-acre POLARIS Centers of Commerce development off Interstate 71, making it a natural fit for a national brand activation aimed at pulling in shoppers from across Central Ohio. The pop-up arrives on the heels of other recent activity at the mall, including a new curry-pasta mashup that opened inside Polaris earlier this week.
