First introduced as a pocket-sized toy in 1996, the classic Tamagotchi virtual pet now comes as just one of the many features loaded onto a fully functional prepaid mobile phone for kids. The phone is being brought to retail through a joint effort between PlayPhone and Bandai America.

The Tamagotchi-branded mobile phone is brightly colored and comes with an enhanced version of the original Tamagotchi toy as a mobile game and a custom Tamagotchi wallpaper. The Tamagotchi mobile game allows kids to "hatch" their virtual pet right on the phone and participate in feeding, cleaning up after and playing with the pet in an attempt to be a good parent and raise a well behaved Tamagotchi.

Unique to the Tamagotchi prepaid mobile phone is PlayPhone's ability to convert users' prepaid airtime minutes into mobile content credits that can be used on the TamaPhone.com Web site. Kids will be able to further customize their Tamagotchi phone with popular wallpaper, ringtones and games without having to use their parent's credit card.

In order to appeal to kids and their parents alike, the Tamagotchi phone will also come with strict, easy-to-use parental controls and a no-contract, pay-as-you-go system powered by PlayPhone's mobile storefront. In addition, parents can easily implement dialing access limitations for incoming and outgoing calls.

Phone image will be added when available.

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