Do you remember… Club Penguin puffles?

You’d saved up your coins from Cart Surfer and Pizzatron, walked into the Pet Shop, and there they were: round balls of fluff in every colour, bouncing in their pens. You picked one, gave it a name you’d regret by Year 9, and took it home to your igloo.

Puffles needed looking after. You fed them, played with them, washed them and put them to bed, and little bars on their status card told you exactly how they felt about you today. Leave one alone for too long and it simply ran away, which was a lot of responsibility to put on a ten-year-old with homework.

Every puffle had its own personality. Blue ones were easy-going, red ones loved a cannon, black ones were moody. Somewhere out there is a whole generation who learned to keep something alive by worrying about a pixel pet that wanted a bubble bath.