Why does the Hanerutchi exist?

[Joc]

In some of the English games, you have Bill.

Someone at Bandai Japan must have liked Bill a lot, as the Hanerutchi is a version of the Ketai (Con.v3) where every single teen and adult is replaced by a variant of Bill (I think you can see what character it originally was by connecting to a normal Ketai) based on humans from a random comedy TV show. They even turn into actual humans when coming close to the screen...

Apperantly it sold well enough that they made a Hanerutchi 2 based on the v4. This one even had a Hanerutchi Town instead of Tamagotchi Town.

Does anyone have a clear idea what the idea and appeal behind this crossover was? The characters don't seem very unique...

 

[hwd45]

What makes you say the characters are Bill variants? They're humans, sure, but they're not really related to Bill in any way.

Bandai Japan seems to have always been reasonably fond of Tamagotchi crossovers - even during the 90s there were a number of crossover devices (the Mothra, Genjintch and TamaOtch immediately come to mind). Nowadays those crossovers still exist but tend to make a bit more "sense" like the multiple Sanrio crossovers or the Eevee Tamagotchi though there's definitely some unusual and unexpected crossovers like the Pac-Man Nano and a certain leaked Tamagotchi supposedly planned for release this year.

But back in the connection era the crossovers seem to have been that extra bit unusual - I'm sure that as westerners there's a level of cultural context that we're missing, perhaps Haneru No Tobira and Oden-Kun and GLAY were really popular in Japan at the time - but all the crossovers they did are utterly bizarre, looking back.

As such I don't think the Hanerutchi is particularly exclusive in being a bit of a weird concept, I think that was just how Bandai operated back then - I don't think there was any specific "reason" the Hanerutchi was a thing aside from it being a profitable endeavour. Historical and cultural context are probably the main things getting in the way of our understanding of why they ever thought the Hanerutchi or even the GLAY Plus were ever considered.