From the Toysit archive
Pixel Chix Yellow Cottage
Alternative digital companion
On Amazon Tamagotchi Connection (paid link)
Use the buttons to feed your Tamagotchi and choose a game. With a second compatible Tamagotchi Connection, the characters can meet, play together and exchange gifts.
A yellow cottage frames a flat animated resident and seven picture buttons. Explore its daily-life choices and make an original paper window-scene theater.
The play at a glance
A small house with a changing scene inside
The yellow cottage has a pink-trimmed roof, a little fence and a row of seven buttons along its base. Its room combines a solid miniature setting with a flat animated character on the display. A player chooses a meal, an outfit, an outing or another part of the day, and the house becomes a stage for the resident’s next scene.
Seven buttons for a miniature day
The guide labels the controls Yes, No, Bed Time, Fashion, Food, Fun and Go Out. The player can answer a question or choose a kind of activity, while the character performs the resulting scene in the cottage window.
Five play levels gradually add foods, clothes and games. Connecting two compatible houses lets their residents visit; the guide also depicts group responses when three or more houses join together. The attraction is partly theatrical: a small figure appears to inhabit the furniture and walls of a house that can be held and viewed from outside.
The character’s level changes and departures follow the game’s rules. They can be read as episodes in a cartoon household. A player can enjoy a short visit and put the toy away when the visit is finished.
Make a window-scene theater
Fold a sheet of paper so it can stand like a tiny room. Draw a large window on the front and furnish the space around it with a lamp, a chair and a picture. Draw a flat character on a separate piece of paper, or use a second folded sheet as a character card.
Let one player be the resident and another the visitor offering choices. Begin with a meal: “Would you like star-shaped toast or moon soup?” Move the character beside the window and narrate the answer. Add the chosen meal to the room drawing.
Try a second scene about fashion or an outing. A yellow coat might lead to an imaginary garden visit; a spotted scarf might be worn to the puppet theater. The player supplies the character’s voice and movements, and the choices can be as ordinary or fanciful as you like.
Join two windows into a neighborhood
Place two paper rooms beside each other. Give each resident one thing to show the other: a painting, a recipe or a photograph from an invented holiday. Ask the visitor to notice a particular detail.
End by drawing a little invitation between the houses. It could announce a soup supper or a gallery opening. On another day, open the story with the invitation and let the other resident host. The paper theater works independently of the electronic cottage.
The historical record
Original Toysit coverage
The complete earlier coverage follows. Its product claims and broader commentary remain part of the historical record; researched details and qualifications appear in Sources.
Virtual LCD two-dimensional electronic doll interacts through controls with three-dimensional playhouse
A Pixel Chix pal is housed in a three-dimensional, four-inch plastic home and shares her personality, spunk and interactivity through an innovative application of LCD technology. Girls have a window onto the two-dimensional pixilated Pixel Chix figure and control how she interacts seamlessly with the 3-D furnishings, staircase, and door.
A Pixel Chix pal comes to life in her virtual home when girls engage her in activities like those from their own everyday lives, such as trying on fashions and socializing with friends. During the day, the time-aware Pixel Chix pal will ask "What should we do?" Girls press an activity button - food, fashion, play or go out - to choose a play category, and then select from the options presented to them using the yes or no buttons.
Dress her in a stylish outfit, and a Pixel Chix pal responds by saying fabulous. Choose her favorite food, and she sits at the 3-D kitchen table to eat it. Send her to bed and she climbs up the 3-D stairs to her bedroom, brushes her teeth, turns out the lights and begins lightly snoring. Three different Pixel Chix houses are available: a stylish loft, a cozy country cottage, and a lavish mansion. Up to ten Pixel Chix houses can be connected together, allowing their residents to socialize - they may chat with each other on the phone, engage in a special group dance, or walk out their virtual front doors to visit each other's Pixel Chix houses for a party or movie night.
"Our research indicates that about half of all youth electronics purchases are made by girls, and Pixel Chix is the first youth electronics item that parallels a little girl's everyday life," said Stephanie Cota of Mattel.
"We say she's a 2-D girl living in a 3-D world, because she loves to do the same things a girl does - she talks, eats, sleeps, exercises, hangs out and plays games. And because girls have told us they want items they can play along with their friends, we've built in fun surprise features that occur only when girls connect their Pixel Chix houses together."
A Pixel Chix pal is full of humorous helpings of attitude. Keep her waiting, and a restless Pixel Chicks pal reminds you with tapping feet and a well-timed ahem. Send her to bed during the daytime, and she's likely to say, no way before sulking upstairs to her bedroom. Suggest that she play outside in her nightgown, and a Pixel Chicks pal exclaims, you want me to go outside in this?
The more girls play with their Pixel Chix pal, the more their virtual world will expand as they accumulate more foods, fashions and games, such as playing the guitar or singing karaoke, adopting a dog or a cat, ordering out pizza or fixing hamburgers, and dressing in tutus or bathing suits. On the other hand, if girls forget to tend to their Pixel Chix pal, she will descend through levels of neglect, losing her accumulated treasures as her house becomes covered with cobwebs and, eventually, the Pixel Chix pal packs up and leaves"
The Pixel Chix pal and her accessories appear in her house through a transmissive LCD screen displayed in negative mode. Two high-bright LEDs illuminate the pixels on the display and the 3-D objects in the house. A Pixel Chix pal communicates through embedded speakers.
Sources and editorial notes
Both pages of Mattel H8330-0920-G5, shared with H8331/H8332, were visually reviewed. The yellow cottage is H8330; the pictured decoration matches that house design, while the exact production revision is unconfirmed. The guide describes two connected houses visiting and three or more producing group responses, but does not establish the 2005 report’s maximum of ten. Level changes and departures are scripted game behavior. The full attributed October 13, 2005 report, quotations and LCD/LED account remain in the historical section. The overlapping virtual/pixel-chix.html report is a separate preserved archive route. The companion activity is original to Toysit. No physical toy testing was performed. Tamagotchi Connection uses a pocket-sized screen and character care. The archived Pixel Chix cottage placed its animated resident against miniature furniture and connected through its house shells.
- Mattel: original Pixel Chix house guide — Both pages reviewed; H8330 yellow cottage, seven controls, five levels and house connections.
- Original Toysit coverage — Complete earlier text, original SSI values and historical image inspected and preserved.
- Bandai Tamagotchi Connection series guide — Current named product reference, checked November 8, 2026.
- Bandai Tamagotchi Connection instructions — Current named product reference, checked November 8, 2026.
Images and descriptions are retained as historical material. How Toysit covers toys.
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