Transparency still works with recent LCDs. A toy could be made with a modern resolution color overlay. Example of LCD without the backlight: ruclips.net/video/Shp5JhOqdKI/видео.html
I HAD ONE OF THESE! I absolutely adored the aesthetic of LCD pixel art over real physical plastic environments, the fact that the toys looked like actual little buildings, and the modularity of each toy. I think there was one where you could put them in a car to bring them to a shopping center. Honestly a really nice little toy concept. I got rid of mine because I forgot about it and whenever I turned it on the house was full of cobwebs and my pixelchick would angrily shout "Where have you _been?_ I thought you were my friend!" and arguably that's just as devastating as a little virtual pet dying
I begged my parents to let me buy one and finally my grandma took me to get one. I remember opening it in the parking lot of Walmart. Honestly one of the most underrated toys of the 2000s.
Ah! That reminds me of my grandparents buying me one when they first came out! They would take me to Toys R Us to pick out toys for my birthday! I never got new toys so I really treasured shopping for my birthday and I played the hell out of my Pixelchick! Shoutout grandparents 🙌🙌
OH HEY! JEFFREY LEVINE HERE... This Is so awesome, kudos to you for doing some great digging! I just want to say toy design is a team effort and a couple of other folks were instrumental in making Pixel happen. Evelyn Smith Mazzocco our Veep who started the ball rolling, Eric Skifstrom who engineered the heck out of it, and the late great Dominic Ambriz, who was the actual lead designer. A LOT of other folks brought this cool toy to life and into your child's toy box Dom passed in his mid 20s but is talent is all over this wonderful toy and many many others. Thank you for praising our wonderful toy. :)
You guy’s toys were amazing! Made my childhood so much fun, thank you for the great ideas/designs. Wish Mattel would still do similar stuff nowadays. I’m 26 now and would still buy lol
When I was a little girl I was so fascinated by this product! As a twenty-five year old woman I'd also still purchase it. Thank you, and your team, for bringing it to life!
Thank you for commenting and giving credit to your colleagues, sir. Pixel chix was one of my birthday gifts when I turned 6 or 7 and I really loved it. Do you still work at the toy making business?
Thank you and all of your colleagues for working hard on this! I had the pink desert terra cotta house one (a gift I would NEVER have gotten but my granddad was visiting and he saw me looking at it) and I leveled her up so far. The sound effects, the clothes, the activities you could do... Just hearing the sound effects from this video brought back a lot of nostalgia. I remember very strongly I fed her a LOT of popcorn. Recently I gave away mine to a mom of a little girl.... I hope somewhere out there she's having a great time with it
i had such an intense love/hate relationship with these toys as a kid because i LOVED playing with them but as soon as you skip a day with the normal house she starts getting mad at you and i was SO CONVINCED that the house became evil and cursed as a result… especially because of the ghost that’s left behind after she leaves
Fun fact about the pixel chix roomies While the other roommates were sold separately- they were essentially only little pegs that would just slot into their place at the bottom of the house The only thing the roomie figurines would press and hold down a few buttons in the base at once of where they sat- which would essentially just tell the game to put the new roomate in But because there was no additional tech tied to the sold separately roomies, you could actually just find a different way to press all the buttons down to get the other roommates for free Which is what I did, by cramming toothpicks into the the various roomies slots I owned a lot of pixel chix as a kid and owned most of them (barring a couple of variants, but even then I owned a couple of variants of ones that I already owned) Two houses, the two story house, both shopping malls, the car, roomies, babysitter I think the only one that truly eluded me was the hamster one Unfortunately I don’t know where these pixel chix have run off to, I think we still have them around in my house somewhere which I hope is the case if only for nostalgias sake
That’s genius! I had the roomies toy and never thought of that. My parents wouldn’t let me buy the additional roommates so I just had to play with the two roomies and got bored quickly.
I had one of the OG pixel chix and my friends and I used to do ‘pixel chick news’ at sleepovers. Basically there was a true or false game you could play where you were supposed to ask her a question and she would answer yes or no. There was no mic or anything, it would just pick a yes or no response randomly lol, so we would ask her news questions with yes or no answers and pretend she was hosting a news segment lol
I’m so glad someone is covering these 2000s oddities! I grew up with two older sisters, one born in 1996. By proxy this means I got a TON of 2000s toys despite not being born till 2004. I remember that once the batteries wore out in our pixel chix, the purple car and rooftop pool, we ended up using them as props for other toys like littlest pet shops!
@@Shadowonwater I love everything and anything 2000s whether it be Tomagotchis or furbys or even just niche toys and subjects, I’ll check them out! Thank you!
Tbh 04 seems like an age where even if you don't have older siblings you might know theses toys. I mean I'm pretty sure Izzzy is born in 02 or 03 and she knew about them.
My niece had a minor fixation on these, with a surprisingly large collection - until one day she dropped one under a car and got it run over. It started fiercely glitching out and occasionally making an electronic screech even when closed and off. Any other house plugged into it would show their character also glitch out violently, and that one in turn would also not be safe to plug into other things. She was traumatised to the point of recurring nightmares by this electronic revenant but refused to throw it away out of guilt, until eventually we got rid of the whole lot while she was out. The moral of the story is... don't run over your electronic friends, I guess.
I had the original blue house. I remember one night we had a loud thunderstorm that literally woke up my Pixel Chix in the middle of the night and scared the shit out of me. I will never forget “Hey I thought you were my friend, where have you been?”
Ah, I remember a friend of mine had one of those. I've always thought girl toys to be a bit shite for the most part, but there are exceptions and Pixel Chix is one of those in my eyes. Though I never asked my parents for one because I'm a guy and up until recently I have been pretty ashamed of that side of my personality. Edit: I remembered that I actually did have a Littlest Pet Shop tamagotchi! My dad found it just lying there on a side of the road, and he picked it up, cleaned it, fixed it and gave it to me and my brother as a gift. It was awesome, looking back on it it might have been one of those things that might have influenced my fondness of birds, since the toy was themed after a bird, some kind of cyan pigeon thingy, it was lovely.
My little sister got a Littlest Pet Shop handheld back in the day and I was really impressed by the variety of games, the detail and everything compared to my fake flea market Tamagochi. So I hopped on my bike and rode to my local toy store to purchase one for myself. This was apparently hard to imagine for the clerk - she asked me if I wanted it to be wrapped as a gift. I said no, went home and felt kind of embarrassed. Nowadays I'm proud of myself for not pretending the purchase wasn't for myself. Because that's kind of what I'd expect from an early teenage boy in 2008 or whenever that happened. Around that time experiences like this did start to slowly shape my political socialization, though. So even if it was only a matter of minutes, it did make me become a better person in the long run.
This is so surreal to watch lol. I had a HUGE collection of these, between my sister and I, we always had at least two versions of each release as they came out, but the order isn't at all what I remember. Obviously the house came first, then the car, but I remember the shopping mall coming third, then the two story house, then the pets, then the baby sitter, and the Roomies being one of the last releases alongside the TV. I actually have no memory of Fab Life lol, but I was a teen by then, so maybe I had just grown out of them. This, of course, is just childhood memory versus documented release dates, but I think it's kinda funny that the officially stated order is so different from what I remember. As time wore on, corrosion was one of the biggest killers of these things because we (AKA: stupid kids) never took the batteries out and they took FOUR AAA's each (save for the car, which I think just got lost). I was able to save the mall and the two story house and still have them in working order to this day. I'm surprised they're so rare now, maybe corrosion was just the common problem so most were beyond saving. BTW, as someone who always got the brunette (my sister always got either the blonde when she was available, or the black-haired one) I can say that the brunette's mall was actually technically the better option because the boutique allowed for so much more customization options without having to connect to anything. While they always existed to communicate with one another, they *were* also advertised as their own thing in each release (save for the tiny car), and the two story house, pets, and baby sitter all had a pretty good amount of content that, despite having so many, we were never really compelled to connect them all that often (it hampered their portability, anyways). I'm sorry this comment is so rambly - I loved these things dearly as a child and never expected to see any kind of video about them on youtube. My younger sister and I weren't allowed video game consoles (because our older brother kept accidentally breaking the cartridges/disks) or tomogachis (because our older sister kept accidentally killing hers) as kids, so these big bulky unkillable boxes with games pre-built into them were literal godsends when they came out. Before then, we occupied ourselves with early computer MMOs, but those weren't portable (yet) and this was a way to take our games with us anywhere we wanted (obviously we couldn't clip them to anything, but we always kept at least one of them in our bags at all times). I remember our older sister marveling at how detailed they were, about how the lights would even turn on when they went upstairs to sleep in the first house iteration - it made us feel like we had some piece of future tech in our hands (plus it's always cool to impress your older siblings). I remember how, after we lost the pet hamster version to corrosion, I braved opening the actual case and taking the circuit board out and using it as a visual to learn about things like diodes and other simple electronic concepts. I remember being trusted with an iron for the first time to make T-shirts with the iron-on print-outs you could find on Mattel's Pixel Chix website. These girls are tied to so many memories. Thank you for taking me back, if even for just half an hour! :) PS - Monster Baby was a Donkey Kong clone - you ascend the level avoiding bottles (barrels) and other household obstacles to stop the baby from having a tantrum once you reach her. It was preserved in Flashpoint.
I didn't experience what it was like when it just came out, but a couple of years back, I found one of the houses (2 story loft) at Goodwill. But like you said, corrosion got to it. There was corrosion (and weird gunk?) around the batteries and sound button, but it works! However, due to this it makes no sound or voice, but it was still fun to play with when I found it. I just tried to figure everything out on my own based on her reactions, even if I couldn't hear her talk (less attitude though!) but me and my sister loved it. I still have it in a box somewhere. Hopefully it's still okay.
OH MY GOD!!! I still have the salon/petshop purse looking one and it still works! I also had the 2 story house, the babysitter house with the wheel on the side to switch between 4 rooms and the giant 6 room house. God I miss these things. I was more of a tomboy as a kid, but the single shred of trendy girly fashionista deep within my dark little soul ADORED these games.
i’m so glad to see you covering virtual pets!! honestly for a virtual pet that is no longer produced and was decently popular, $50 is pretty good, the collecting community for tamagotchis is insaneee. look up how much devilgotchis sell for if you’re curious!
The physical backgrounds mixed with the 2d characters blew my mind back then along time ago lol! I loved the character designs too! Thanks for unlocking something I totally forgot about :D
I had the hamster one! Honestly they did a great job with the upside down feature - the 3D items each have some sort of flap or extension that gets activated with the gravity of putting the game upside down and it converts the habitat to a rock concert venue, it’s adorable!
I had the massive roommate apartment one and i loved it as a kid. I remember i was able to collect all of the roommates except for one: the nerd girl. They took her off of shelves before i could get my hands on her. Not being able to complete the collection haunted me, i would never know what it was like to have the complete roomie experience. I was enraged to find out only a few months ago that you didn't actually need the little figures to unlock the character in the game, you could just shove literally anything into the character port in order to trick the game into unlocking the character. Its baffling. Apparently there were a bunch of kids who were my age at the time who figured this out and were able to cheese it. I wish i had been one of those kids 😭
Reminds me of how we put tape over our Wiimote speakers because of the awful ringing they constantly made. I'm just now wondering if that wasn't normal...
I remember these, I never had one myself, but I think the whole 2D girl/3D world is really cool, and seeing all those flipping panes moving her around is honestly impressive.
When this video popped up I was like “huh, izzzy is covering something I’ve not heard of” and then you played the tv advert and I had a flashback like fucking Ego from Ratatouille
I agree. It’d be really cool to get a couple different backgrounds too to swap out for your character or something but even if that didn’t happen, the digital screen over a real backdrop is pretty cool
The overwhelming nostalgia. I had one of the two story houses and the mall. I could never figure out how to connect them. Either way, they were really charming little life sims and I didn't appreciate how unique they were
I forgot these exised. I had a car, pet shop/hair salon and roomies. I remember if you jammed bobby pins into roomies in a certain way you could get all of the chiks instead of buying them, which is what my parents did instead of actually buying them for me lmao
I remember saving up my allowance when I was a kid so I could buy the babysitter one for myself and I could not tell you how many hours I spent playing with that thing, it was EVERYTHING to me haha I still have it!! never getting rid of it it's far too precious
I cannot express how thankful I am that you made this video, I genuinely couldn't find ANYONE who knew about pixel chix!! I used to have the exact same one and I had no clue how to use it (except from giving her food) so I just spammed buttons. I'm pretty sure my dad picked it up in a car boot fair, and I was so amazed on how the girl could just move around (pretty sure I named her Leela or something)! Thank you Izzzyzzz I feel a little less lonely in nostalgia with every video you make 😭
yes-the pixel chix games were their own thing and not connected to the roomie MMO! pixel says was simon says, monster baby was donkey kong, there was a mini golf and design your own fashion show game as well. the movie maker was really fun too :)
Oh my god I had so many of these as a kid- my heart just skipped a beat seeing this notification. Thanks Izzy for reminding everyone these absolutely existed! ✨
I remember the monster baby game so thoroughly… it was this platformer game where you played as the pixel chix girl and you had to get to the top of each level while avoiding various falling objects. It was a bizarre game but I miss it every day. I also remember a moviemaker game on the site, me and my sister were absolutely obsessed with it.
You can still play the games! Flashpoint has them and a lot more of our childhood games, it's safe to download. I go there from time to time to relive my childhood and to feel nostalgic.
I remember these! I was already out of demographic by the time they came out, but I remember the commercials. I honestly love the idea of the pixel character interacting with the "real" set. That was a clever touch. Not great for the environment, but I kind of miss having separate electronic toys like this. Like, this could just be an app now. As for Tamagotchis, I was more of a GigaPets girl. I had a dalmatian, a mermaid, and a cat. They often died due to my human need for sleep. Edit: LMAO, I just remembered something about the GigaPets. The mermaid one was a Disney product modeled after Ariel. Instead of becoming chum when I neglected her, she'd run away and marry a prince. It had an animation and everything. King Triton had nothing on the number of mermaids I lost to monarchs.
These things were SO much fun, my go-to car toy.... And then one day my sister and I were wearing sunscreen and got in the car to go to the lake playing with our pixel chix and the sunscreen MELTED OFF the symbols on the buttons so from then on we had to memorize which button did what 😂
I got one from a yard sale when I was really little for only 50¢, and I played on it all the time. This is extremely nostalgic, and it had been killing me for a long time because I never could remember the name of it until now. I had the alternate food court mall version of the one she has in this video. I played this game so much that the lines and quotes are still engraved in my dad's head from hearing me play it so often. He still quotes the game to this day. I don't know what happened to it, but I'd 100% play it again as an adult.
One of my best friends as a kid had the two story house, and I distinctly remember staying up for HOURS past her falling asleep playing with the thing. It was old and crusty and she never played with it anymore, and I was just entranced by the LCD screen ontop of an actual real plastic 'set'. It was such a cool idea and looked so neat!
Monster Baby was the HARDEST yet most addictive platform flash game of my childhood. I used to play it all the time! It’s a platform game where you try to get to the top level whilst avoiding giant baby bottles. ✨✨
As a kid with unsupervised Internet access, I always wanted someone to talk about my favorite childhood games, you threw me back with this one! I still have the original, the salon, the mansion and they work perfectly. You just need AA batteries. Great video once again✨✨
What a nice stroll down memory lane. I had so many of these haha. I have a no longer useful life hack for the Roomies one. Just take pieces of paper and fold them until it fit into the slots and bam, free characters! The roommate figures weren't electronic, but more so like a key fitting into the slot (which even as a kid I thought that was odd cause anyone could just stuff enough shit in there to make it work). Anyway, great video!
@@ginandromeda1618 I mean, I suppose it still works. No reason for it not to. I only said it's not useful anymore because most people no longer have any Pixel Chix toys, let alone the Roomies one, so I assumed this would just be old news. If you have a Roomies Pixel Chix that you still use, I'm sure this is still a useful hack!
@@eggo9402 Omg I wouldve been more than happy to share that tip with anyone who would listen back then. Only problem was none of my friends played with Pixel Chix, so I was stuck with this precious piece of information and no one to share it with until now lol
As a pixel chix fanatic, It brings me such joy to see a video like this. I remember the pixel chix website fondly and oddly enough remember Monster Baby fairly vividly. Monster Baby was incredibly similar to the first donkey kong. You (the babysitter) had to climb up multiple floors to the baby wrecking havoc above. You avoid rolling baby bottles and falling diapers until you make it to the top! Decently simple but I played it so much back in the day it was good fun.
Even though I never knew these existed, it gives me lots of nostalgia and I really miss the early 2000s. Toys and websites were so much better back then. 😢
I remember playing with mine late at night when I was supposed to be asleep. It always felt so loud and bright and, at least to my knowledge, there wasn't any way to turn the brightness or volume down
oh my god i had the roomies one but my parents didnt want to buy all the separate girls so my dad just cut up an expired debit card to insert into the places where the girls would go AND IT WORKED!!! i spent hours playing that thing at my grandparents house lmao
oh my god that "exCUSE me" is seared into my memories, I absolutely loved these things as a kid. had the house and the car and would spend hours trying to keep her happy lol
OH MY GOD I feel like I've unlocked a hidden memory! I remember having a shopping one just like the one you got! I didn't understand why I felt so nostalgic until it hit me, wow. I completely forgot these existed. I had no idea it was a while franchise!
The concept is amazing to me. A screen over an actual room where it looks like pets are sitting on a set of stairs or your pixel chix is working behind a counter. To me that would blow my kid brain. Another amazing video!!! Could you do a video covering free realms?
The commercials, the crosplay, the interior design! This is such a blast from the past. I was shook when one day I opened up the game and my pixelchix had her suitcases at the door💀
My parents and I would forever remember the pixel chic mainly because she would talk in the middle of the night, it would always freak my parents out 😂 I swear the pixel chic had a mind of its own!
I had a friend that was a couple of years older than me, so she graciously gave me her Pixel Chix Roomie's House once she lost interest in it. Just the fact these tiny pixel ladies could go into different rooms blew my mind.
SAME! I was really young at the time when this was popular, so when I was old enough to actually be able to play with it and my older cousins grew out of it they handed the babysitting one down to me, I remember it being such a fun part of my childhood
I remember being obsessed with that monster baby game! I believe it was like a platformer where you had to get to the baby or something. I'm pretty sure at the end they reveal it was all a dream the main girl was having lmao.
oh yeah i remember that game didn't you have to climb shelves while avoiding baby bottles and also didn't the baby took a shake(i think it was a shake i don't remember what it was but i know it was a drink) from your character and you had to get it back?
One of my favorite RUclipsrs talking about the toy that I was obsessed with it until it traumatized me as a child?? Hell yeah. always up for being reminded that this wonderful thing exists lol
@@ventea9858 Being yelled at by the Pixel Chix, who then angrily stomped and left the house, followed by a ghost appearing in the house, spooked me. Then she just returns happy and smiling like nothing happened. It freaked me out lol
One thing that you didn’t mention (which I honestly sorta get) is that there was a pixel chix “demo” available on the website. You couldn’t play games with it but you could push the buttons and see what they do. I never had one growing up but even that little interactivity made them really appealing
I had one of these growing up, and if nothing else, I can vividly remember how big of an attitude she had. For an 8 year old it was infuriating to watch her move out over and over 😭
So nice to see you cover PixelChix! I was in first grade when (2007-2008) when I was an active user on their website. During an after school program, me and my classmates would hop on the computers and play Monster Baby. It was super addicting and fun (and the site itself wasn't really used for MMO purposes like you mentioned). Monster Baby was such a huge part of my childhood so I'm glad that you covered it. Would kill to play that game again!
@@swingingspaceagebachelorma2498 it was actually pretty hard. or at least it was for me as a 7 year old. i remember being stuck at the kitchen level for ages without progressing. it might've been my first taste of gamer rage tbh lol
@Swinging Space Age Bachelor Man Same as what Stephanie said. You just had to avoid bottles, animals, etc being thrown your way and progress upwards to the top of the map to beat the level. It's been over 15 years so I'm a little fuzzy on the details!
I remember finding that exact purse model discarded in an alleyway behind my house as a kid. It was a bit rough up but still functional. Brought it home and put some batteries in it and absolutely adored it, loved how you could change her hair and own a pet. Though I believe it was missing a memory card or something, cuz it would always reset. Sadly, I lost it when we moved houses.
18:50 I REMEMBER THE MONSTER BABY GAME I played that a ton when I was a kid! It was like a sorta Donkey Kong style game where the baby was DK and you had to try and climb up a bunch of giant furniture and house decorations to reach him Whenever you lost the game, it would show a little animation of the Pixel Chick waking up, and saying something like "what a weird dream!", and look to where she left the kid she'd been babysitting, only to spront out of the room when she hears a noise off screen I have SUCH vivid memories of that game, as well as a dress-up game that had been on the site
The piggy bank one is actually a really great idea and sounds cool as hell. Genuinely sounds like it would have helped younger me save money by tripling my in-game money and making it interactive like that
I had a Tamagotchi for a hot minute when I was six and it stressed me out so much. I was losing sleep over keeping it alive. It would be better if games like this only required you to interact like twice a day before your friend dies and/or leaves lol
the 2d sprites and 3d room is a super cool idea, and I really like how you can flip the screen to move rooms and attach different items to have the characters move from place to place. I also really like the pixel art style :3 I wasn't familiar with this toy before its super cool looking
My sister had one of these but the vpet i was obsessed with from this time was Miuchiz. It was another toy that tried really hard to bridge that online to physical toy gap a little bit before everyone else did. The physical toy had a USB that you could plug in to your computer to get access to an "MMO" (honestly more of a 3D chat room) that had the weirdest half-finished liminal energy ever. I loved it and it was my replacement for Toontown when my parents refused to pay for the subscription lol im dying for other people to discover/talk about this because it really was such a funky little thing.
Aaah! Thank you for bringing that up. I was thinking about that exact MMO the whole video because I falsly remembered it to belong to Pixel Chix. I had neither of the toys myself but a childhood friend had a Miuchiz (which I know the name of now thanks to you!) and we would sit together in front of her PC with very shaky internet connection and just explore this weird 3D-environment (ca 2011?). That MMO was one of my first experiences with online multiplayer, but I don't remember a lot of actual activities and the liminalness is very prominent in my mind. In my memory it had weird lighting and coloring and the characters looked like they were from various series, so kinda VR-Chat vibe but empty and in a plastic toy world. I didn't feel very invited as a kid/young teen tbh but I was also a bit scared of the internet in general at that time XD Anyways, your description is really on point and helped me clear that up, so thanks! :D
oh my gOD I was obsessed with miuchiz too!! I have never heard anyone talk about them so I honestly thought I imagined them in a fever dream or something lol. I had the Bratz Babiez Cloe one and I loved playing the dancing minigame!! I also remember how strangely empty the "MMO" was, it was such a weird concept. Would love to see Izzy dive into these!!
i had the bratz miuchiz and i couldn't agree more about the liminal feeling in the mmo. nobody was ever on and the rendering and lighting were so rough and spooky. i remember typing out chat messages and nobody ever replied lol
These actually successfully made me feel like I hadn’t missed out on tamagachi. I remember my older sister baby sitting her friend’s once and she got so mad at me because I overfed it while she wasn’t watching it. I never got to use one again after that and I think my school might have banned them because I feel like I never saw anyone with one after 1st or 2nd grade. I remember that if anyone managed to get one into school, it was always held really close and we could really only look at it because they were so much of a novelty to my class. It was different with pixel chix - I collected a whole little messed up mansion worth of rooms and would spend hours just kind of staring at each of them. I think I just liked the aesthetics of the background because I would always move onto Polly pocket which had a similar style - that really rubbery sort of look.
I love watching every video on this channel because every single one of them is so nostalgic and relatable. It awakens my inner child again and it's honestly refreshing. I used to be ADDICTED to the monster baby game when I was a kid and I absolutely could not tell you why. I remember it being a donkey kong-esque game where you try to climb ladders, avoiding the items being thrown (I explicitly remember a rolling baby bottle you'd have to jump over) to reach the top where the baby is. I'm so happy to see this being talked about more :)
I was thinking it was Donkey Kong! The image of the ladder and Pixel walking towards it seemed very Kongish in my mind. Also, you know, you have to rescue someone up very high while someone tries to stop you with hazards. It's just not usually the same person.
i remember i had SO MANY of these things , and all i actually remember about actually using them is picking them up every few months , playing for like 10 minutes and then getting bored because , like you pointed out , they were *so janky* and there was just so little to do. they were also always so. so confusing to use. the nostalgia from this is insane though , you really unlocked deep memories with this one lmao
PIXEL CHIX!!! 🥺 I had these as a kid and collect them as an adult! I cannot believe I didn’t realize Tara Strong voice acted them 🥲 It’s so obvious especially in the ads!!! Thanks for a fun and interesting video as always 🥰💗🌈
0:07 HEY DON'T DISS MY DOODLE BEAR DAMMIT /j Btw, can I just say, I love that you use the Petz games background music. Petz Catz was one of my favorites and hearing the music again makes me feel nostalgic.
Oh my god I was absolutely obsessed with this as a kid!!! I had the classical/pink and only heard years later that there were other models and you could all make them interact with each other!!
Oh man, I had these when I was a kid. I had that exact mall purse and I can't tell you how much fun I had with that game. I even had the nerdy Roomie character but my parents were too broke to get me and my siblings the house set. We also collected Tamagotchis as well... this whole video is literally my childhood in a nutshell lol
despite being a dude, i was always enamored by Pixel Chix, along with Digimon and Tamagotchi as a kid. the digital age aesthetic was always something that brought me great joy. to this day i am still a massive fan of things like Mega Man Battle Network and Code Lyoko
God, as this video played out, there were several moments that brought back memories that I hadn't thought of in soooo long. Thinking of them now, I feel like I remember them so clearly. Now I kind of want to dig around my parent's place to see if I can locate my old Pixel Chix toys. Great video as always, and thank you for this trip down memory lane! Also, hearing that "eh eh ehm, ex-CUSE me" gave me VIVID flashbacks lmao
I just wanted to say I’ve been watching your channel for a year or so now and I just love you! You’re my favorite channel and I get excited when you post. Don’t ever stop, unless you want to of course 😂❤️❤️
Man, these look super adorable! The pixel art is extremely cute, the transparent screens over the physical rooms looks really cool, and the voice acting also adds so much to theye toys! I've mostly completely missed the virtual pet craze of that era (aside from my sister owning a Tamagotchi), but looking at it now, Pixel Chix seem so much cooler to me than Tamagotchis!
I think Pixel Chick wasn't available in my country, but honestly this seems really innovative! 3D+2D, switchable screen, rotating a toy, clipping another ones good potential. The piggy bank one is my favourite I think, let's be honest Mattel still wanted to make money off of children (children saving money for more Pixie Chicks XD), but it still had some value to it
if we're talking poland i 100% had the mcdonalds one but couldve been from a happy meal during one of the voyages across europe i got to experience as a kid lol. other than the mcd toy i dont recall it ever being sold and honestly imagine the pain of rerecording all the voice lines and shit edit:now that i think of it the timelines dont exactly match cause we traveled pre-european union so i guess we might have gotten the mcd toys but not the real thing???
This unearthed memories of my first real foray into art and character design, earlier than what I thought was my beginning as an artist. Another great vid on nostalgic media!
The concept of the Roomies toy sounds like an idea for a reality show I had the purse styled one Izzy shows in the video along with the mansion and car that came bundled in a pack together, I'm kind of surprised I never heard of the rest of these. The commercials feel so familiar, yet at the same time I don't remember them. The 2000s sure were something.
I was thinking the character models in the smooth-shaded commercials (not the cel-shaded ones) look a lot like Jimmy Neutron character models. DNA Productions, maybe... can't find anything saying who Mattel contracted, though.
You are the only person I know of who can wear literal clown makeup and it looks perfectly natural, beautiful, and not try-hard. Your style is so unique and I live vicariously through your looks because I'm too afraid to wear anything like that myself haha 😅 it's so freaking cool!
I had a Pixel Chix toy when I was little and religiously played the games on their websites. I used to think that Pixel Chix was some kind of weird fever dream of my childhood, but when I rediscovered them- a huge flood of memories came back! I would give any amount of money to have one again, I remember them being so fun
I was like, "Why have I never heard of these?!" Then I remembered that I was an older teen boy at the time and this was not something that would even make it on my pretentious hipster radar 😂 Neat concept.
This was so interesting!! I would love to see you cover Diva Starz! I had one of the dolls and the computer game and played the latter relentlessly for a good chunk of my childhood haha
Pixel Chix never crossed my radar as a kid but I absolutely would've flipped my shit at that 2D 3D combo. If they ever bring it back I hope they do more with it! ✨ Also is Gaia Online already on your list? That site and its deliciously petty dramas consumed my soul for 3 years, it'd be so great to see it covered. Thanks as always for your content, love the nostalgic deep dives and research you put into these!
LOVED PIXEL CHIX. I saved up for every model 😆 The website also had a hamster game where you had to get them through a maze so they could get to their concert or something like that - honestly so so many happy hours spent on Pixel Chix. Truly the reason why I reckon so many are into life sims like The Sims!
This is honestly perfect timing. The other day i was looking through old stuff and i found one! Its was a teal house and actually still works! I remember having a car as well and honestly i thought it might’ve been something I completely made up in my early teens. I absolutely love your channel, and your deep dives into specific niches!
Pixel Chix was such an important part of my childhood. I spent so much time playing with that hamster toy and going on that website back when it was still up. It's so bizarre how a tamagotchi-clone like that could keep me entertained for literal hours on end when it only had so few features to offer.
I adore the idea of the screen over the house since I love dollhouses and it has even more potential as an idea nowadays. I hope someone brings that idea back! I didn't experience what it was like when it just came out, but a couple of years back, I found one of the houses (2 story loft) at Goodwill. It was a little messed up and there was corrosion around the sound button, but it works! However, due to the corrosion, it makes no sound or voice, but it was still fun to play with. I just tried to figure everything out on my own based on her reactions, even if I couldn't hear her talk (less attitude though!) but me and my sister loved it. I still have it in a box somewhere in my room. Later, I did some more research into it and kind of got into a rabbit hole looking at every single one. Glad to learn even more with this video!
Dude, I'm so ecstatic to see this on my RUclips homepage!!! I own the pink purse looking one and I played the absolute sh*t out of it. I always saw the commercials online that let you buy more so that they connect. To me, this toy was a pinnacle of girlboss gaming. Kind of interesting how regarding some typical 2000-2010's girls toys, they adopted a model of portable/pocket sized to have fun on the go. Regardless, thank you so so so much for uploading this and reminding me of my blissful childhood (the adult world is a cruel, cruel maybe sometimes fun place).
I never had one of the toys but I spent HOURS on the websites (plural, because I would change the region so I could experience all the available websites that Pixel Chix had around the world, even though I didn't understand the languages) I can confirm that Monster Baby was an offshoot of the babysitting toys, wherein you would catch items that the baby dropped. I think you also had to avoid certain items but I don't know for sure. Thanks for walking me down memory lane with this one!
i spent hours on the website daydreaming about owning them too 😭😭 my dad spoiled the hell out of me as a little kid, but i guess multiple pixel chicks was where he drew the line lmao
OH MY GOD i loved pixel chix so much as a kid and as i got older i started to wonder if they'd even really existed or if i'd remembered them wrong. i've always been fascinated by things that combine real life with 2d art or animation, so the whole 2d pixel character inside my real life little house was just so pleasant for me!!! even now i smile at the thought of something like that! plus miniatures are a special interest of mine, and even though these aren't miniatures per say, the little tiny plastic rooms inside the homes really satisfied that miniature-loving itch within me!! also, all these years and only NOW do i learn that her voice was tara strong????? i'm devastated that i hadn't realised this sooner!! to be fair though her voice was very distorted on my pixel chix so i'll go easy on little me for having not picked up on that i was actually lucky enough to own a few!! the small purple home was my first one and one of my favourites, and even though i loved it i remember finding her mean 😭 this was one of the ones i played with the most, but eventually it gets to a point where every time you pick up the toy she decides to leave, bc of how infrequently i'd use it. i remember always going to play with it and waiting a couple seconds for the screen to turn on and holding my breath to see if the cobwebs showed up. and when they (mostly always) did show up, i'd sigh and roll my eyes bc now i had to wait for her to walk in with her little suitcase and sit through her moaning at me and watch her slow ass dramatic exit lmao i also had the babysitting one which i do think was the best one i had by far. i didn't always love it since it stressed me out quite a lot, but it was the one i found most interactive and engaging. plus being able to turn a knob and change rooms was so captivating and fascinating to me!! i loved that gimic!!! that baby though.... the moment i saw it show up in this video i immediately got flashbacks... that little shit was always disappearing into other rooms and causing trouble and giving me a fucking heart attack every two seconds i stg it was a menace later down the line i got the car one and thought it was okay, but also i remember it being noisy? i also completely forgot until i saw it in this video but i had the little tv as well which i fully forgot existed!! we got it from toysRus back when that was still kicking. my parents rarely took us there, and on the off chance we did, it was as a treat, and we were only allowed to get one thing. and that day i saw a pixel chix thing and beelined for it lmao. i remember literally nothing about it aside from the weird remote and small amount of buttons, i don't even remember the game itself at all. although i do have a clear memory of playing with it for the first time in the car journey back from that toysRus, and it just stopped working right then and there. idk if it was a faulty one, but it just ceased to function and i was so confused 😭 as for the connectivity feature of them, i actually barely remember it?? first of all i'm pretty sure my car one wouldn't actually connect properly when i tried to attach them. but other than that i don't really have any memories of me connecting mine, despite having a few. i have no idea why. either i didn't care for the feature as a kid, or maybe i did connect some of them but just haven't uprooted those deep memories lmao anyways sorry for rambling over this. it doesn't matter in the slightest but i just had to get this off my chest because wowowow the nostalgia hit me like a ton of bricks!!
![Stromae, Pomme - “Ma Meilleure Ennemie” (from Arcane Season 2) [Official Visualizer]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/1F3OGIFnW1k/mqdefault.jpg)
Check out Dragon Mania Legends over here! dml.page.link/Izzzyzzz
I absolutely love your makeup!
it didn't work for me and i just downloaded the game :( do I need to be a certain level? I just got past the tutorial
I remember playing that game! Loved the dragons!!
Question: Is it 100 percent science based? Is it dragon?
I played this game years ago, you just brought all the memories back
Honestly, the idea of a transparent screen over a physical set as a toy is so cool. It would be interesting to see what they could make of that today.
Hatsume Miku Pixel Chix
@@Pinkywinkykinky I was literally thinking the same thing lmao
Transparency still works with recent LCDs. A toy could be made with a modern resolution color overlay. Example of LCD without the backlight: ruclips.net/video/Shp5JhOqdKI/видео.html
@@hordeofzombine thats awesome!
@@Pinkywinkykinky I WOULD BUY ONE
Honestly gotta give them props for sticking completely with the black and white/pixelilated aesthetic for the whole branding
I was thinking the same thing!
Yeah I feel like most other brands would have smoothed her out and gave her color after some time
I don't think they could, keeping the screen see through so the environment could be 3d wouldn't be easy to accomplish with color
@@Jarjarvideos "...for the whole branding"
@@Jarjarvideos I think op was talking about ads and promos n stuff
God I remember owning the blue one and being so very emotional about her angrily moving out after not playing with it for a few days😂
Same!!! Obviously it's not Tamagotchi dying levels traumatic, but I still remember being anxious/hurt when she got mad and moved out
i love the fact they can move out like... where do they go
@@missrachelrothbro I got a tamagotchi for Christmas and it’s died twice 💀 it’s so annoying when it beeps so I’m just leaving it dead tbh
I freaked out so bad when mine moved out! I had no idea it could happen, so it was quite the unpleasant surprise.
@@iwakeupandboomimarat Maybe it's like the movie Her and she goes to live with other Pixel Chix in an unknown realm.
I HAD ONE OF THESE! I absolutely adored the aesthetic of LCD pixel art over real physical plastic environments, the fact that the toys looked like actual little buildings, and the modularity of each toy. I think there was one where you could put them in a car to bring them to a shopping center. Honestly a really nice little toy concept. I got rid of mine because I forgot about it and whenever I turned it on the house was full of cobwebs and my pixelchick would angrily shout "Where have you _been?_ I thought you were my friend!" and arguably that's just as devastating as a little virtual pet dying
I never had a job version of these! This one has way more gameplay than the one I had
you mean spiders were getting into your pixelchix and making webs inside the actual housing part? that is terrifying
@@rastacat Lol, I never had one but I’m guessing the cobwebs were also just pixels to represent the passage of time/abandonment.
@@ShintogaDeathAngel oh my gosh you're definitely right LOL, my bad. i can now sleep knowing the answer is less terrifying than i had thought
@@rastacat this is the funniest thing I have read today
"Change the room with the movable screen"/"movable background" is PURE GENIUS. I am honestly deeply impressed.
I begged my parents to let me buy one and finally my grandma took me to get one. I remember opening it in the parking lot of Walmart. Honestly one of the most underrated toys of the 2000s.
Ah! That reminds me of my grandparents buying me one when they first came out! They would take me to Toys R Us to pick out toys for my birthday! I never got new toys so I really treasured shopping for my birthday and I played the hell out of my Pixelchick!
Shoutout grandparents 🙌🙌
This is the first time I’ve ever heard of this, but I am actually very impressed with the LCD overlay aesthetic.
Give it up for grandparents
This was me with Tamagotchi, I finally managed to convince my aunt to buy me one and my dad got so mad at her LOL
Was literally so fun!
OH HEY! JEFFREY LEVINE HERE...
This Is so awesome, kudos to you for doing some great digging!
I just want to say toy design is a team effort and a couple of other folks were instrumental in making Pixel happen.
Evelyn Smith Mazzocco our Veep who started the ball rolling, Eric Skifstrom who engineered the heck out of it, and the late great Dominic Ambriz, who was the actual lead designer. A LOT of other folks brought this cool toy to life and into your child's toy box Dom passed in his mid 20s but is talent is all over this wonderful toy and many many others. Thank you for praising our wonderful toy. :)
You guy’s toys were amazing! Made my childhood so much fun, thank you for the great ideas/designs. Wish Mattel would still do similar stuff nowadays. I’m 26 now and would still buy lol
When I was a little girl I was so fascinated by this product! As a twenty-five year old woman I'd also still purchase it. Thank you, and your team, for bringing it to life!
How come this was commented almost a week ago and it doesn't have more likes? Make this go up! Izzzyzzz needs to see this epic response!
Thank you for commenting and giving credit to your colleagues, sir. Pixel chix was one of my birthday gifts when I turned 6 or 7 and I really loved it. Do you still work at the toy making business?
Thank you and all of your colleagues for working hard on this! I had the pink desert terra cotta house one (a gift I would NEVER have gotten but my granddad was visiting and he saw me looking at it) and I leveled her up so far. The sound effects, the clothes, the activities you could do... Just hearing the sound effects from this video brought back a lot of nostalgia. I remember very strongly I fed her a LOT of popcorn. Recently I gave away mine to a mom of a little girl.... I hope somewhere out there she's having a great time with it
i had such an intense love/hate relationship with these toys as a kid because i LOVED playing with them but as soon as you skip a day with the normal house she starts getting mad at you and i was SO CONVINCED that the house became evil and cursed as a result… especially because of the ghost that’s left behind after she leaves
omg i love ur channel ^.^
heyy love your videos, you and plushiepath save me when there’s no more izzzyzzz videos to binge lol
@@strawberycupcake I feel the same way about @lispeaks lol very entertaining creators
Scared me so much as a child. I actually stopped playing after the first time she left the house and the ghost appeared
@@ma.2089 the first time it happened to me i had to keep it buried at the bottom of my toy chest with the batteries out for weeks. why was it so SCARY
Fun fact about the pixel chix roomies
While the other roommates were sold separately- they were essentially only little pegs that would just slot into their place at the bottom of the house
The only thing the roomie figurines would press and hold down a few buttons in the base at once of where they sat- which would essentially just tell the game to put the new roomate in
But because there was no additional tech tied to the sold separately roomies, you could actually just find a different way to press all the buttons down to get the other roommates for free
Which is what I did, by cramming toothpicks into the the various roomies slots
I owned a lot of pixel chix as a kid and owned most of them (barring a couple of variants, but even then I owned a couple of variants of ones that I already owned)
Two houses, the two story house, both shopping malls, the car, roomies, babysitter
I think the only one that truly eluded me was the hamster one
Unfortunately I don’t know where these pixel chix have run off to, I think we still have them around in my house somewhere which I hope is the case if only for nostalgias sake
It’s been 6 months, have you found any?
I had one of those
you are a legens
That’s genius! I had the roomies toy and never thought of that. My parents wouldn’t let me buy the additional roommates so I just had to play with the two roomies and got bored quickly.
I was so freaking jealous of the other kids that had pixel chicks, they were my obsession that I was never able to satisfy.
Get one !
same! my cousin had one and i would always sit beside her and watch her play with it
My advice for getting one: vinted has a weird amount of them for slightly cheaper than other places
I am a boy and i had the single floor house and the two story house and the theme park model
@@mimimeow6704isn’t it only France though (vinted website) will it work for others people
I had one of the OG pixel chix and my friends and I used to do ‘pixel chick news’ at sleepovers. Basically there was a true or false game you could play where you were supposed to ask her a question and she would answer yes or no. There was no mic or anything, it would just pick a yes or no response randomly lol, so we would ask her news questions with yes or no answers and pretend she was hosting a news segment lol
I love that idea, it sounds like fun!
that is so cute ahaha
"Wubbalubba dubba is that true?"
I’m so glad someone is covering these 2000s oddities! I grew up with two older sisters, one born in 1996. By proxy this means I got a TON of 2000s toys despite not being born till 2004. I remember that once the batteries wore out in our pixel chix, the purple car and rooftop pool, we ended up using them as props for other toys like littlest pet shops!
another RUclipsr that covered this and covers a lot of 2000s stuff is Billiam. Check him out if you haven't heard of him!
@@Shadowonwater I love everything and anything 2000s whether it be Tomagotchis or furbys or even just niche toys and subjects, I’ll check them out! Thank you!
Tbh 04 seems like an age where even if you don't have older siblings you might know theses toys. I mean I'm pretty sure Izzzy is born in 02 or 03 and she knew about them.
I used to have a pixel chix too so I was really glad when i saw this video
As a person born in 1999 I love early and mid 2000s oddities forgotten nostalgia.
My niece had a minor fixation on these, with a surprisingly large collection - until one day she dropped one under a car and got it run over. It started fiercely glitching out and occasionally making an electronic screech even when closed and off. Any other house plugged into it would show their character also glitch out violently, and that one in turn would also not be safe to plug into other things. She was traumatised to the point of recurring nightmares by this electronic revenant but refused to throw it away out of guilt, until eventually we got rid of the whole lot while she was out.
The moral of the story is... don't run over your electronic friends, I guess.
I had the original blue house. I remember one night we had a loud thunderstorm that literally woke up my Pixel Chix in the middle of the night and scared the shit out of me. I will never forget “Hey I thought you were my friend, where have you been?”
man, virtual pets rlly guilt trip you don't they.
Ah, I remember a friend of mine had one of those. I've always thought girl toys to be a bit shite for the most part, but there are exceptions and Pixel Chix is one of those in my eyes. Though I never asked my parents for one because I'm a guy and up until recently I have been pretty ashamed of that side of my personality.
Edit: I remembered that I actually did have a Littlest Pet Shop tamagotchi! My dad found it just lying there on a side of the road, and he picked it up, cleaned it, fixed it and gave it to me and my brother as a gift. It was awesome, looking back on it it might have been one of those things that might have influenced my fondness of birds, since the toy was themed after a bird, some kind of cyan pigeon thingy, it was lovely.
My little sister got a Littlest Pet Shop handheld back in the day and I was really impressed by the variety of games, the detail and everything compared to my fake flea market Tamagochi. So I hopped on my bike and rode to my local toy store to purchase one for myself. This was apparently hard to imagine for the clerk - she asked me if I wanted it to be wrapped as a gift. I said no, went home and felt kind of embarrassed.
Nowadays I'm proud of myself for not pretending the purchase wasn't for myself. Because that's kind of what I'd expect from an early teenage boy in 2008 or whenever that happened. Around that time experiences like this did start to slowly shape my political socialization, though. So even if it was only a matter of minutes, it did make me become a better person in the long run.
This is so surreal to watch lol. I had a HUGE collection of these, between my sister and I, we always had at least two versions of each release as they came out, but the order isn't at all what I remember. Obviously the house came first, then the car, but I remember the shopping mall coming third, then the two story house, then the pets, then the baby sitter, and the Roomies being one of the last releases alongside the TV. I actually have no memory of Fab Life lol, but I was a teen by then, so maybe I had just grown out of them. This, of course, is just childhood memory versus documented release dates, but I think it's kinda funny that the officially stated order is so different from what I remember.
As time wore on, corrosion was one of the biggest killers of these things because we (AKA: stupid kids) never took the batteries out and they took FOUR AAA's each (save for the car, which I think just got lost). I was able to save the mall and the two story house and still have them in working order to this day. I'm surprised they're so rare now, maybe corrosion was just the common problem so most were beyond saving.
BTW, as someone who always got the brunette (my sister always got either the blonde when she was available, or the black-haired one) I can say that the brunette's mall was actually technically the better option because the boutique allowed for so much more customization options without having to connect to anything. While they always existed to communicate with one another, they *were* also advertised as their own thing in each release (save for the tiny car), and the two story house, pets, and baby sitter all had a pretty good amount of content that, despite having so many, we were never really compelled to connect them all that often (it hampered their portability, anyways).
I'm sorry this comment is so rambly - I loved these things dearly as a child and never expected to see any kind of video about them on youtube. My younger sister and I weren't allowed video game consoles (because our older brother kept accidentally breaking the cartridges/disks) or tomogachis (because our older sister kept accidentally killing hers) as kids, so these big bulky unkillable boxes with games pre-built into them were literal godsends when they came out. Before then, we occupied ourselves with early computer MMOs, but those weren't portable (yet) and this was a way to take our games with us anywhere we wanted (obviously we couldn't clip them to anything, but we always kept at least one of them in our bags at all times).
I remember our older sister marveling at how detailed they were, about how the lights would even turn on when they went upstairs to sleep in the first house iteration - it made us feel like we had some piece of future tech in our hands (plus it's always cool to impress your older siblings). I remember how, after we lost the pet hamster version to corrosion, I braved opening the actual case and taking the circuit board out and using it as a visual to learn about things like diodes and other simple electronic concepts. I remember being trusted with an iron for the first time to make T-shirts with the iron-on print-outs you could find on Mattel's Pixel Chix website. These girls are tied to so many memories. Thank you for taking me back, if even for just half an hour! :)
PS - Monster Baby was a Donkey Kong clone - you ascend the level avoiding bottles (barrels) and other household obstacles to stop the baby from having a tantrum once you reach her. It was preserved in Flashpoint.
If Billiam has gotten his channel back, he has a deep dive video into pixel chix you might enjoy!
I didn't experience what it was like when it just came out, but a couple of years back, I found one of the houses (2 story loft) at Goodwill. But like you said, corrosion got to it. There was corrosion (and weird gunk?) around the batteries and sound button, but it works! However, due to this it makes no sound or voice, but it was still fun to play with when I found it. I just tried to figure everything out on my own based on her reactions, even if I couldn't hear her talk (less attitude though!) but me and my sister loved it. I still have it in a box somewhere. Hopefully it's still okay.
OH MY GOD!!! I still have the salon/petshop purse looking one and it still works! I also had the 2 story house, the babysitter house with the wheel on the side to switch between 4 rooms and the giant 6 room house. God I miss these things. I was more of a tomboy as a kid, but the single shred of trendy girly fashionista deep within my dark little soul ADORED these games.
I am so, so jealous of kid you. I wanted one of these for YEARS and never got one.
i’m so glad to see you covering virtual pets!! honestly for a virtual pet that is no longer produced and was decently popular, $50 is pretty good, the collecting community for tamagotchis is insaneee. look up how much devilgotchis sell for if you’re curious!
The physical backgrounds mixed with the 2d characters blew my mind back then along time ago lol! I loved the character designs too! Thanks for unlocking something I totally forgot about :D
I had the hamster one! Honestly they did a great job with the upside down feature - the 3D items each have some sort of flap or extension that gets activated with the gravity of putting the game upside down and it converts the habitat to a rock concert venue, it’s adorable!
I remember playing with my friends one and spending ages just flipping it around, it wasn't even turned on and I was hooked
I had the massive roommate apartment one and i loved it as a kid. I remember i was able to collect all of the roommates except for one: the nerd girl. They took her off of shelves before i could get my hands on her. Not being able to complete the collection haunted me, i would never know what it was like to have the complete roomie experience. I was enraged to find out only a few months ago that you didn't actually need the little figures to unlock the character in the game, you could just shove literally anything into the character port in order to trick the game into unlocking the character. Its baffling. Apparently there were a bunch of kids who were my age at the time who figured this out and were able to cheese it. I wish i had been one of those kids 😭
oh my goddd I REMEMBERED HAVING ALL THE CHARACTERS BUT NONE OF THE FIGURES AS A KID LOL.
@@gurogaisha I'm so jealous of you 😭
my sister and i stuck toothpicks in the holes to get all the characters even though we only had like two of the figures
i absolutely LOVED these as a kid! my family put duct tape over the speakers because they thought they were hella loud lol
She was always yelling 😂
@@DylanRomanov fr she yelling like she have to pay rent 😭
Reminds me of how we put tape over our Wiimote speakers because of the awful ringing they constantly made.
I'm just now wondering if that wasn't normal...
@@Schnort definitely wasn't lmao
@@plushdragonteddy ohh boy
I remember these, I never had one myself, but I think the whole 2D girl/3D world is really cool, and seeing all those flipping panes moving her around is honestly impressive.
When this video popped up I was like “huh, izzzy is covering something I’ve not heard of” and then you played the tv advert and I had a flashback like fucking Ego from Ratatouille
I couldn’t be farther from the target demographic for this toy line but holy shit, am I enamored by it. This genuinely looks super cool
this is my exact reaction to most of what izzzyzzz posts and I love it
They were SO FUN
Ikr, I want one
I agree. It’d be really cool to get a couple different backgrounds too to swap out for your character or something but even if that didn’t happen, the digital screen over a real backdrop is pretty cool
The overwhelming nostalgia. I had one of the two story houses and the mall. I could never figure out how to connect them. Either way, they were really charming little life sims and I didn't appreciate how unique they were
As far as I remember you needed the car to go between the two locations..! So much nostalgia hearing the Pixel Chix voice after so long haha
@Vegemite Guzzler yup unfortunately
I forgot these exised. I had a car, pet shop/hair salon and roomies. I remember if you jammed bobby pins into roomies in a certain way you could get all of the chiks instead of buying them, which is what my parents did instead of actually buying them for me lmao
@@vegemiteguzzler9783 this makes sense out now but sadly child me wasn't paying attention to the lore in the commercials haha
@@kieran7173 your parents were cool
I remember saving up my allowance when I was a kid so I could buy the babysitter one for myself and I could not tell you how many hours I spent playing with that thing, it was EVERYTHING to me haha I still have it!! never getting rid of it it's far too precious
precious? this is more iconic and important than the Crown Jewels 💎
I cannot express how thankful I am that you made this video, I genuinely couldn't find ANYONE who knew about pixel chix!! I used to have the exact same one and I had no clue how to use it (except from giving her food) so I just spammed buttons. I'm pretty sure my dad picked it up in a car boot fair, and I was so amazed on how the girl could just move around (pretty sure I named her Leela or something)! Thank you Izzzyzzz I feel a little less lonely in nostalgia with every video you make 😭
yes-the pixel chix games were their own thing and not connected to the roomie MMO! pixel says was simon says, monster baby was donkey kong, there was a mini golf and design your own fashion show game as well. the movie maker was really fun too :)
Oh my god I had so many of these as a kid- my heart just skipped a beat seeing this notification. Thanks Izzy for reminding everyone these absolutely existed! ✨
@Goofy ahh wth is u doing here
i never owned these, but god i was so interested in them
I get a flashback to the pizza chewing animation and her angry stomping out the door every few months or so.
@@Seisipy ignore it hun
@@ghstgvts OMFG YES
I remember the monster baby game so thoroughly… it was this platformer game where you played as the pixel chix girl and you had to get to the top of each level while avoiding various falling objects. It was a bizarre game but I miss it every day.
I also remember a moviemaker game on the site, me and my sister were absolutely obsessed with it.
You can still play the games! Flashpoint has them and a lot more of our childhood games, it's safe to download. I go there from time to time to relive my childhood and to feel nostalgic.
Yeah, it was kinda of like a mario clone! I think it’s available on flashpoint
i was literally obsessed with it! i got so excited when it was shown on screen!! i used to play monster baby for literal hours lmfao
Ahakdhowjsbs the movie game!!!
I remember these! I was already out of demographic by the time they came out, but I remember the commercials. I honestly love the idea of the pixel character interacting with the "real" set. That was a clever touch. Not great for the environment, but I kind of miss having separate electronic toys like this. Like, this could just be an app now. As for Tamagotchis, I was more of a GigaPets girl. I had a dalmatian, a mermaid, and a cat. They often died due to my human need for sleep.
Edit: LMAO, I just remembered something about the GigaPets. The mermaid one was a Disney product modeled after Ariel. Instead of becoming chum when I neglected her, she'd run away and marry a prince. It had an animation and everything. King Triton had nothing on the number of mermaids I lost to monarchs.
The movable screen in-front of playsets is genuinely cool and creative. That rotating one with the multiple rooms is great too. I love this concept.
These things were SO much fun, my go-to car toy.... And then one day my sister and I were wearing sunscreen and got in the car to go to the lake playing with our pixel chix and the sunscreen MELTED OFF the symbols on the buttons so from then on we had to memorize which button did what 😂
I got one from a yard sale when I was really little for only 50¢, and I played on it all the time. This is extremely nostalgic, and it had been killing me for a long time because I never could remember the name of it until now. I had the alternate food court mall version of the one she has in this video. I played this game so much that the lines and quotes are still engraved in my dad's head from hearing me play it so often. He still quotes the game to this day. I don't know what happened to it, but I'd 100% play it again as an adult.
The voice over really brought back memories for me too 😂
I vaguely remember this character boping around during my Barbie website days, so this should be interesting.
I love how Izzy’s content consists of the nostalgia that I’ve lived through and the nostalgia that I never had! 😁
One of my best friends as a kid had the two story house, and I distinctly remember staying up for HOURS past her falling asleep playing with the thing. It was old and crusty and she never played with it anymore, and I was just entranced by the LCD screen ontop of an actual real plastic 'set'. It was such a cool idea and looked so neat!
Monster Baby was the HARDEST yet most addictive platform flash game of my childhood. I used to play it all the time! It’s a platform game where you try to get to the top level whilst avoiding giant baby bottles. ✨✨
I just love the aesthesic of mixing a tiny set on the background with the pixel animations in the foreground, so cute
As a kid with unsupervised Internet access, I always wanted someone to talk about my favorite childhood games, you threw me back with this one! I still have the original, the salon, the mansion and they work perfectly. You just need AA batteries. Great video once again✨✨
What a nice stroll down memory lane. I had so many of these haha. I have a no longer useful life hack for the Roomies one. Just take pieces of paper and fold them until it fit into the slots and bam, free characters! The roommate figures weren't electronic, but more so like a key fitting into the slot (which even as a kid I thought that was odd cause anyone could just stuff enough shit in there to make it work). Anyway, great video!
Wait, did the life hack work? Why's no longer useful?
lol i wasn't as creative as you ... would have been such a great hack
@@ginandromeda1618 I mean, I suppose it still works. No reason for it not to. I only said it's not useful anymore because most people no longer have any Pixel Chix toys, let alone the Roomies one, so I assumed this would just be old news. If you have a Roomies Pixel Chix that you still use, I'm sure this is still a useful hack!
@@eggo9402 Omg I wouldve been more than happy to share that tip with anyone who would listen back then. Only problem was none of my friends played with Pixel Chix, so I was stuck with this precious piece of information and no one to share it with until now lol
Banger after banger. Thank you so much Izzy for bringing us this unique internet experience. Your videos transport me somewhere
agreed! I will watch anything Izzy puts out even if I didn’t personally experience it
As a pixel chix fanatic, It brings me such joy to see a video like this. I remember the pixel chix website fondly and oddly enough remember Monster Baby fairly vividly. Monster Baby was incredibly similar to the first donkey kong. You (the babysitter) had to climb up multiple floors to the baby wrecking havoc above. You avoid rolling baby bottles and falling diapers until you make it to the top! Decently simple but I played it so much back in the day it was good fun.
Even though I never knew these existed, it gives me lots of nostalgia and I really miss the early 2000s. Toys and websites were so much better back then. 😢
I remember playing with mine late at night when I was supposed to be asleep. It always felt so loud and bright and, at least to my knowledge, there wasn't any way to turn the brightness or volume down
oh my god i had the roomies one but my parents didnt want to buy all the separate girls so my dad just cut up an expired debit card to insert into the places where the girls would go AND IT WORKED!!! i spent hours playing that thing at my grandparents house lmao
I was looking for a comment to see if anyone else did it, i did this with bobby pins to get all the roomies
oh my god that "exCUSE me" is seared into my memories, I absolutely loved these things as a kid. had the house and the car and would spend hours trying to keep her happy lol
OH MY GOD I feel like I've unlocked a hidden memory! I remember having a shopping one just like the one you got! I didn't understand why I felt so nostalgic until it hit me, wow. I completely forgot these existed. I had no idea it was a while franchise!
The concept is amazing to me. A screen over an actual room where it looks like pets are sitting on a set of stairs or your pixel chix is working behind a counter. To me that would blow my kid brain. Another amazing video!!! Could you do a video covering free realms?
The commercials, the crosplay, the interior design! This is such a blast from the past. I was shook when one day I opened up the game and my pixelchix had her suitcases at the door💀
My parents and I would forever remember the pixel chic mainly because she would talk in the middle of the night, it would always freak my parents out 😂
I swear the pixel chic had a mind of its own!
I had a friend that was a couple of years older than me, so she graciously gave me her Pixel Chix Roomie's House once she lost interest in it. Just the fact these tiny pixel ladies could go into different rooms blew my mind.
SAME! I was really young at the time when this was popular, so when I was old enough to actually be able to play with it and my older cousins grew out of it they handed the babysitting one down to me, I remember it being such a fun part of my childhood
I never had a PixelChix as a kid, but the transparent screen was SO cool to me. This still brought back the memories
hearing the "ahem hem ... excuse me!" soundbite transported me back instantly
I remember being obsessed with that monster baby game! I believe it was like a platformer where you had to get to the baby or something. I'm pretty sure at the end they reveal it was all a dream the main girl was having lmao.
oh yeah i remember that game didn't you have to climb shelves while avoiding baby bottles and also didn't the baby took a shake(i think it was a shake i don't remember what it was but i know it was a drink) from your character and you had to get it back?
One of my favorite RUclipsrs talking about the toy that I was obsessed with it until it traumatized me as a child?? Hell yeah.
always up for being reminded that this wonderful thing exists lol
How did it traumatized you?
Please tell how it ended up traumatizing you
How were you traumatized by it :o
@@ventea9858 Being yelled at by the Pixel Chix, who then angrily stomped and left the house, followed by a ghost appearing in the house, spooked me.
Then she just returns happy and smiling like nothing happened. It freaked me out lol
@@ventea9858 a bit relatable in negative ways to life circumstances.
And I didn’t like ghosts lol
One thing that you didn’t mention (which I honestly sorta get) is that there was a pixel chix “demo” available on the website. You couldn’t play games with it but you could push the buttons and see what they do. I never had one growing up but even that little interactivity made them really appealing
I had one of these growing up, and if nothing else, I can vividly remember how big of an attitude she had. For an 8 year old it was infuriating to watch her move out over and over 😭
dude. DUDE. i FUCKED with pixel chix back in the day and the nostalgia i'm experiencing rn is religious
So nice to see you cover PixelChix! I was in first grade when (2007-2008) when I was an active user on their website. During an after school program, me and my classmates would hop on the computers and play Monster Baby. It was super addicting and fun (and the site itself wasn't really used for MMO purposes like you mentioned). Monster Baby was such a huge part of my childhood so I'm glad that you covered it. Would kill to play that game again!
Just curious, what was the gameplay of Monster Baby like? If you remember it at all.
If I’m remembering correctly, I’m pretty sure it was a Donkey Kong spin-off. Avoiding things being thrown at you by moving up ladders onto platforms
@@swingingspaceagebachelorma2498 it was actually pretty hard. or at least it was for me as a 7 year old. i remember being stuck at the kitchen level for ages without progressing. it might've been my first taste of gamer rage tbh lol
@Swinging Space Age Bachelor Man Same as what Stephanie said. You just had to avoid bottles, animals, etc being thrown your way and progress upwards to the top of the map to beat the level. It's been over 15 years so I'm a little fuzzy on the details!
@サシセイヨ Omg I vaguely remember the kitchen level. That was super hard and it took me a LOT of attempts before I was able to pass it!
I absolutely loved tamagotchi and pixel chix! Super excited to watch :)
Did a bot just reply to a bot
@@notaseat5934 damn i think so
I remember finding that exact purse model discarded in an alleyway behind my house as a kid. It was a bit rough up but still functional. Brought it home and put some batteries in it and absolutely adored it, loved how you could change her hair and own a pet. Though I believe it was missing a memory card or something, cuz it would always reset. Sadly, I lost it when we moved houses.
18:50
I REMEMBER THE MONSTER BABY GAME
I played that a ton when I was a kid! It was like a sorta Donkey Kong style game where the baby was DK and you had to try and climb up a bunch of giant furniture and house decorations to reach him
Whenever you lost the game, it would show a little animation of the Pixel Chick waking up, and saying something like "what a weird dream!", and look to where she left the kid she'd been babysitting, only to spront out of the room when she hears a noise off screen
I have SUCH vivid memories of that game, as well as a dress-up game that had been on the site
The piggy bank one is actually a really great idea and sounds cool as hell. Genuinely sounds like it would have helped younger me save money by tripling my in-game money and making it interactive like that
I had a Tamagotchi for a hot minute when I was six and it stressed me out so much. I was losing sleep over keeping it alive. It would be better if games like this only required you to interact like twice a day before your friend dies and/or leaves lol
Or better, they should work like you haven’t been gone at all and your friend is just kinda asleep when the game is turned off
the 2d sprites and 3d room is a super cool idea, and I really like how you can flip the screen to move rooms and attach different items to have the characters move from place to place. I also really like the pixel art style :3 I wasn't familiar with this toy before its super cool looking
My sister had one of these but the vpet i was obsessed with from this time was Miuchiz. It was another toy that tried really hard to bridge that online to physical toy gap a little bit before everyone else did. The physical toy had a USB that you could plug in to your computer to get access to an "MMO" (honestly more of a 3D chat room) that had the weirdest half-finished liminal energy ever. I loved it and it was my replacement for Toontown when my parents refused to pay for the subscription lol im dying for other people to discover/talk about this because it really was such a funky little thing.
Aaah! Thank you for bringing that up. I was thinking about that exact MMO the whole video because I falsly remembered it to belong to Pixel Chix. I had neither of the toys myself but a childhood friend had a Miuchiz (which I know the name of now thanks to you!) and we would sit together in front of her PC with very shaky internet connection and just explore this weird 3D-environment (ca 2011?). That MMO was one of my first experiences with online multiplayer, but I don't remember a lot of actual activities and the liminalness is very prominent in my mind. In my memory it had weird lighting and coloring and the characters looked like they were from various series, so kinda VR-Chat vibe but empty and in a plastic toy world. I didn't feel very invited as a kid/young teen tbh but I was also a bit scared of the internet in general at that time XD Anyways, your description is really on point and helped me clear that up, so thanks! :D
oh my gOD I was obsessed with miuchiz too!! I have never heard anyone talk about them so I honestly thought I imagined them in a fever dream or something lol. I had the Bratz Babiez Cloe one and I loved playing the dancing minigame!! I also remember how strangely empty the "MMO" was, it was such a weird concept. Would love to see Izzy dive into these!!
i had the bratz miuchiz and i couldn't agree more about the liminal feeling in the mmo. nobody was ever on and the rendering and lighting were so rough and spooky. i remember typing out chat messages and nobody ever replied lol
These actually successfully made me feel like I hadn’t missed out on tamagachi. I remember my older sister baby sitting her friend’s once and she got so mad at me because I overfed it while she wasn’t watching it. I never got to use one again after that and I think my school might have banned them because I feel like I never saw anyone with one after 1st or 2nd grade. I remember that if anyone managed to get one into school, it was always held really close and we could really only look at it because they were so much of a novelty to my class. It was different with pixel chix - I collected a whole little messed up mansion worth of rooms and would spend hours just kind of staring at each of them. I think I just liked the aesthetics of the background because I would always move onto Polly pocket which had a similar style - that really rubbery sort of look.
Man you brought me back a memory I ABSOLUTELY COMPLETELY forgot i had. I literally was obsessed with this and somehow I forgot all about it.
I love watching every video on this channel because every single one of them is so nostalgic and relatable. It awakens my inner child again and it's honestly refreshing. I used to be ADDICTED to the monster baby game when I was a kid and I absolutely could not tell you why. I remember it being a donkey kong-esque game where you try to climb ladders, avoiding the items being thrown (I explicitly remember a rolling baby bottle you'd have to jump over) to reach the top where the baby is. I'm so happy to see this being talked about more :)
I was addicted to monster baby too! I wish I could play it again. I could never finish the game and I want to try and beat it once and for all.
I was thinking it was Donkey Kong! The image of the ladder and Pixel walking towards it seemed very Kongish in my mind. Also, you know, you have to rescue someone up very high while someone tries to stop you with hazards. It's just not usually the same person.
i remember i had SO MANY of these things , and all i actually remember about actually using them is picking them up every few months , playing for like 10 minutes and then getting bored because , like you pointed out , they were *so janky* and there was just so little to do.
they were also always so. so confusing to use.
the nostalgia from this is insane though , you really unlocked deep memories with this one lmao
PIXEL CHIX!!! 🥺 I had these as a kid and collect them as an adult! I cannot believe I didn’t realize Tara Strong voice acted them 🥲 It’s so obvious especially in the ads!!! Thanks for a fun and interesting video as always 🥰💗🌈
0:07 HEY DON'T DISS MY DOODLE BEAR DAMMIT /j
Btw, can I just say, I love that you use the Petz games background music. Petz Catz was one of my favorites and hearing the music again makes me feel nostalgic.
Oh my god I was absolutely obsessed with this as a kid!!! I had the classical/pink and only heard years later that there were other models and you could all make them interact with each other!!
Oh man, I had these when I was a kid. I had that exact mall purse and I can't tell you how much fun I had with that game. I even had the nerdy Roomie character but my parents were too broke to get me and my siblings the house set. We also collected Tamagotchis as well... this whole video is literally my childhood in a nutshell lol
despite being a dude, i was always enamored by Pixel Chix, along with Digimon and Tamagotchi as a kid. the digital age aesthetic was always something that brought me great joy. to this day i am still a massive fan of things like Mega Man Battle Network and Code Lyoko
God, as this video played out, there were several moments that brought back memories that I hadn't thought of in soooo long. Thinking of them now, I feel like I remember them so clearly. Now I kind of want to dig around my parent's place to see if I can locate my old Pixel Chix toys. Great video as always, and thank you for this trip down memory lane!
Also, hearing that "eh eh ehm, ex-CUSE me" gave me VIVID flashbacks lmao
all I hear is twilight sparkle LMAO
I just wanted to say I’ve been watching your channel for a year or so now and I just love you! You’re my favorite channel and I get excited when you post. Don’t ever stop, unless you want to of course 😂❤️❤️
Man, these look super adorable! The pixel art is extremely cute, the transparent screens over the physical rooms looks really cool, and the voice acting also adds so much to theye toys!
I've mostly completely missed the virtual pet craze of that era (aside from my sister owning a Tamagotchi), but looking at it now, Pixel Chix seem so much cooler to me than Tamagotchis!
I think Pixel Chick wasn't available in my country, but honestly this seems really innovative! 3D+2D, switchable screen, rotating a toy, clipping another ones good potential. The piggy bank one is my favourite I think, let's be honest Mattel still wanted to make money off of children (children saving money for more Pixie Chicks XD), but it still had some value to it
if we're talking poland i 100% had the mcdonalds one but couldve been from a happy meal during one of the voyages across europe i got to experience as a kid lol. other than the mcd toy i dont recall it ever being sold and honestly imagine the pain of rerecording all the voice lines and shit
edit:now that i think of it the timelines dont exactly match cause we traveled pre-european union so i guess we might have gotten the mcd toys but not the real thing???
Poland definitely had these. I have two and they even have Polish voices.
This unearthed memories of my first real foray into art and character design, earlier than what I thought was my beginning as an artist. Another great vid on nostalgic media!
Pixel Chix are exactly what I would've loved as a kid; she would never be lonely.
This unlocked a very deeply hidden memory. I wanted one so badly. I used to play my friends.
The concept of the Roomies toy sounds like an idea for a reality show
I had the purse styled one Izzy shows in the video along with the mansion and car that came bundled in a pack together, I'm kind of surprised I never heard of the rest of these. The commercials feel so familiar, yet at the same time I don't remember them. The 2000s sure were something.
I was thinking the character models in the smooth-shaded commercials (not the cel-shaded ones) look a lot like Jimmy Neutron character models. DNA Productions, maybe... can't find anything saying who Mattel contracted, though.
You are the only person I know of who can wear literal clown makeup and it looks perfectly natural, beautiful, and not try-hard. Your style is so unique and I live vicariously through your looks because I'm too afraid to wear anything like that myself haha 😅 it's so freaking cool!
My sister had this Tamagotchi imitation but it was for My Littlest Petshop and I would always play it. I was so obsessed with it 😹
I had that one too!!
I had the little pet shop one has well! Only memory I have of gameplay is somehow traveling to an area and not knowing how to go back to my house lol
I had a Pixel Chix toy when I was little and religiously played the games on their websites. I used to think that Pixel Chix was some kind of weird fever dream of my childhood, but when I rediscovered them- a huge flood of memories came back! I would give any amount of money to have one again, I remember them being so fun
I was like, "Why have I never heard of these?!" Then I remembered that I was an older teen boy at the time and this was not something that would even make it on my pretentious hipster radar 😂
Neat concept.
This was so interesting!! I would love to see you cover Diva Starz! I had one of the dolls and the computer game and played the latter relentlessly for a good chunk of my childhood haha
Pixel Chix never crossed my radar as a kid but I absolutely would've flipped my shit at that 2D 3D combo. If they ever bring it back I hope they do more with it! ✨ Also is Gaia Online already on your list? That site and its deliciously petty dramas consumed my soul for 3 years, it'd be so great to see it covered. Thanks as always for your content, love the nostalgic deep dives and research you put into these!
I was surprised my the Gaia Online mentioned! I think it's a little bit different to the other topics in her other videos. But I would gladly watch it
LOVED PIXEL CHIX. I saved up for every model 😆 The website also had a hamster game where you had to get them through a maze so they could get to their concert or something like that - honestly so so many happy hours spent on Pixel Chix. Truly the reason why I reckon so many are into life sims like The Sims!
This is honestly perfect timing. The other day i was looking through old stuff and i found one! Its was a teal house and actually still works! I remember having a car as well and honestly i thought it might’ve been something I completely made up in my early teens. I absolutely love your channel, and your deep dives into specific niches!
Pixel Chix was such an important part of my childhood. I spent so much time playing with that hamster toy and going on that website back when it was still up. It's so bizarre how a tamagotchi-clone like that could keep me entertained for literal hours on end when it only had so few features to offer.
I adore the idea of the screen over the house since I love dollhouses and it has even more potential as an idea nowadays. I hope someone brings that idea back!
I didn't experience what it was like when it just came out, but a couple of years back, I found one of the houses (2 story loft) at Goodwill. It was a little messed up and there was corrosion around the sound button, but it works! However, due to the corrosion, it makes no sound or voice, but it was still fun to play with. I just tried to figure everything out on my own based on her reactions, even if I couldn't hear her talk (less attitude though!) but me and my sister loved it. I still have it in a box somewhere in my room. Later, I did some more research into it and kind of got into a rabbit hole looking at every single one. Glad to learn even more with this video!
Dude, I'm so ecstatic to see this on my RUclips homepage!!! I own the pink purse looking one and I played the absolute sh*t out of it. I always saw the commercials online that let you buy more so that they connect. To me, this toy was a pinnacle of girlboss gaming. Kind of interesting how regarding some typical 2000-2010's girls toys, they adopted a model of portable/pocket sized to have fun on the go. Regardless, thank you so so so much for uploading this and reminding me of my blissful childhood (the adult world is a cruel, cruel maybe sometimes fun place).
I never had one of the toys but I spent HOURS on the websites (plural, because I would change the region so I could experience all the available websites that Pixel Chix had around the world, even though I didn't understand the languages)
I can confirm that Monster Baby was an offshoot of the babysitting toys, wherein you would catch items that the baby dropped. I think you also had to avoid certain items but I don't know for sure.
Thanks for walking me down memory lane with this one!
i spent hours on the website daydreaming about owning them too 😭😭
my dad spoiled the hell out of me as a little kid, but i guess multiple pixel chicks was where he drew the line lmao
I was obsessed with these toys, I still own a bunch of them! Definitely a core childhood memory
OH MY GOD i loved pixel chix so much as a kid and as i got older i started to wonder if they'd even really existed or if i'd remembered them wrong. i've always been fascinated by things that combine real life with 2d art or animation, so the whole 2d pixel character inside my real life little house was just so pleasant for me!!! even now i smile at the thought of something like that! plus miniatures are a special interest of mine, and even though these aren't miniatures per say, the little tiny plastic rooms inside the homes really satisfied that miniature-loving itch within me!! also, all these years and only NOW do i learn that her voice was tara strong????? i'm devastated that i hadn't realised this sooner!! to be fair though her voice was very distorted on my pixel chix so i'll go easy on little me for having not picked up on that
i was actually lucky enough to own a few!! the small purple home was my first one and one of my favourites, and even though i loved it i remember finding her mean 😭 this was one of the ones i played with the most, but eventually it gets to a point where every time you pick up the toy she decides to leave, bc of how infrequently i'd use it. i remember always going to play with it and waiting a couple seconds for the screen to turn on and holding my breath to see if the cobwebs showed up. and when they (mostly always) did show up, i'd sigh and roll my eyes bc now i had to wait for her to walk in with her little suitcase and sit through her moaning at me and watch her slow ass dramatic exit lmao
i also had the babysitting one which i do think was the best one i had by far. i didn't always love it since it stressed me out quite a lot, but it was the one i found most interactive and engaging. plus being able to turn a knob and change rooms was so captivating and fascinating to me!! i loved that gimic!!! that baby though.... the moment i saw it show up in this video i immediately got flashbacks... that little shit was always disappearing into other rooms and causing trouble and giving me a fucking heart attack every two seconds i stg it was a menace
later down the line i got the car one and thought it was okay, but also i remember it being noisy? i also completely forgot until i saw it in this video but i had the little tv as well which i fully forgot existed!! we got it from toysRus back when that was still kicking. my parents rarely took us there, and on the off chance we did, it was as a treat, and we were only allowed to get one thing. and that day i saw a pixel chix thing and beelined for it lmao. i remember literally nothing about it aside from the weird remote and small amount of buttons, i don't even remember the game itself at all. although i do have a clear memory of playing with it for the first time in the car journey back from that toysRus, and it just stopped working right then and there. idk if it was a faulty one, but it just ceased to function and i was so confused 😭
as for the connectivity feature of them, i actually barely remember it?? first of all i'm pretty sure my car one wouldn't actually connect properly when i tried to attach them. but other than that i don't really have any memories of me connecting mine, despite having a few. i have no idea why. either i didn't care for the feature as a kid, or maybe i did connect some of them but just haven't uprooted those deep memories lmao
anyways sorry for rambling over this. it doesn't matter in the slightest but i just had to get this off my chest because wowowow the nostalgia hit me like a ton of bricks!!