Aki was around 30 years old when she came up with the Tamagotchi virtual pets. Hoping to work with children, she joined Bandai in 1990, working in sales and marketing. She came up with the idea of a portable pet when she saw a commercial of a young boy trying to carry his pet turtle around.
In October 1996, she passed out prototypes of the toy to 200 high school girls in Tokyo. The toy went on sale the following month, on November 23, 1996. It was originally developed as a gender-neutral brand, but as the majority of the audience was women (over 60%), the toy would later be marketed primarily to girls, while Aki would later help develop Tamagotchi’s brother franchise, Digimon.
