Who will you hatch?
Magical eggs that comes from the land of Hatchtopia, Hatchimals are Mix-and-Match Critters who charmed their way into being the top holiday toys of 2016. The gimmick of these creatures is that they manage to hatch by themselves and can grow up (mentally) from baby to child. Created by Spinmaster in that very year, the franchise has grown to include blind bag eggs, novels, and an Animated Adaptation in the form of short animations.
In early 2017, a branch of the franchise called CollEGGtibles was released. They are Funsized versions of the existing characters plus many, many more Hatchimals. Similar to their larger counterpart, these critters do come in eggs, but must be cracked open by hand to reveal who's inside.
Hatchimals provide examples of:
- All There in the Manual: Sticker books and collection guides give little tidbits about the denizens of Hatchtopia.
- Ambiguous Gender: Hatchimals lack any attributes in defining their genders. The CollEGGtibles take that a step further with giving all the critters eyelashes. On the other hand, the Web Series removed the lashes from some of the characters but only in the animation.
- Babysitting Episode: Episode 12, Babysitting EGGcitement, has Paroo assigning Team Hatch to watch over the infant Hatchimals after Tigrette insisted that babysitting is an easy job.
- Beach Episode: Episode 6, Sandcastle EGGventure, where the Hatchimals have a sandcastle contest while Team Hatch tries to find the egg.
- Black Comedy: The Hatchimals CollEGGtibles app has elements of this.
- The Breezy Beach minigame, where your Hatchimal can swim through the ocean for an increasingly long period of time, and eventually no access to air. Their trip will end with a bump in the head by some random object, despite how far they have gone out to the sea.
- The Cloud Cove minigame has your Hatchimal bouncing through the clouds. Failing to land on another cloud has the young Hatchimal presumably fall from sky, or even space, depending on how good you were playing.
- Confession Cam: The Hatchimals web series uses this to a heavy degree, with quips from Team Hatch about the situation at hand.
- Catchphrase: In the Adventures in Hatchtopia shorts, Draggle has “Let’s do this!”. Penguala also has “Time to hatch a new friend!”
- Continuity Cavalcade: The Hatchery Nursery in Babysitting EGGcitement hosts all the babies Team Hatched helped up to that point.
- Cute Critters Act Childlike: Hatchimals never age (mentally) past childhood.
- A Dog Named "Dog": Hatchimals tend to go by their species name, including their own color for clarification when needed.
- Early-Installment Weirdness:
- The first edition's time in egg and hatching times are unnaturally long, taking almost a half hour of caring until they're ready to hatch, and an increasingly long hatch time. To avoid frustration, later editions shorten the times to about 5-10 minutes, while the WOW edition shortens it to 2-3 minutes.
- The first edition, as well as the "Surprise" variant, had a game called "Psychic Hatchimal" which is like a Magic 8-Ball type of game. This game was dropped from all future variants.
- Everything's Better with Rainbows: The Hatchimal's eyes will flash rainbow colors when it's ready to hatch or moves up a level.
- Feather Fingers: How Hatchimals hold things and express themselves in the web series.
- Five-Second Foreshadowing: The sole hint toward which Hatchimal will come out of the egg is it will be one of the two as displayed on the package. The Mystery variant averts this.
- Gender-Blender Name: If you take the Colleggtor's guide bios to heart, then some of the male Hatchimals end up identifying with their feminine sounding names. Special note to Team Hatch's Tigrette, who identifies with male pronouns.
- Gender-Equal Ensemble: Team Hatch has Zebrush and Penguala identifying with female pronouns while Tigrette and Draggle are noted with male pronouns.
- Goth: Seems to be the main style of Hatchimals Glow Up.
- Happy Birthday to You!: Hatchimals have a version of this song in their native language called "Hatchy Birthday", which they sing after hatching or leveling up.
- Hello, [Insert Name Here]: The Fabula Forest and Mystery variants allow the Hatchimal to record the owner's name and use it in some of their phrases (ie. "How are you [name]?").
- Humans Are Cthulhu: Implied. The main four in Adventures in Hatchtopia initially react to the human-like (albeit not fully human) Pixies with surprise, wonder, shock, and not counting Draggle's reaction even fear. Subverted with the other Hatchies, who, though maybe only because they were immediately given the assurance that the Pixies are friendly, welcome the Pixies with open arms.
- Identity Amnesia: The Forget-Me-Not Florets cause this on anyone who steps on them. Team Hatch had a run-in with these in Hatch Forget Me Not.
- Identical Twin ID Tag: For the Surprise variant, besides the A and B on their bottoms, there are several visual differences discerning the twins apart:
- Only Twin A can move on its own.
- Twin A has a flat bottom while Twin B has an indented one.
- Twin A's eyes display multiple colors, while Twin B's eyes only show pink and blue.
- Living Mood Ring: The Hatchimals' light-up LED eyes change color based on how they're feeling at the moment.
- Red: Upset
- Orange: Needs to burp
- Flashing orange: Hiccups
- Yellow: Playing
- Green: Sick
- Light blue: Cold
- Dark blue: Scared
- Purple: Hungry
- Pink: Heartbeat
- White: Going to sleep
- Rainbow: Ready to hatch
- Magic 8-Ball: The original and Surprise variants had this type of minigame, titled "Psychic Hatchimal". This minigame was dropped from the Fabula Forest variant onward.
- Meat-O-Vision: Tigrette briefly views his teammates as cupcakes when struggling to keep up in Draggle Takes the Cake
- Our Pixies Are Different: The Hatchimals Pixies are magical creatures that resemble young human girls with translucent bird-like wings and are apparently a recently discovered creature.
- Pink Girl, Blue Boy: For the Hatchibabies, boys are blue while girls are pink or purple.
- Punny Name: Every Hatchimal's name is a mishmash between the names of the critters they're based off of.
- Punny Title: Several of the web shorts uses a pun including the word egg or hatch.
- Reactive Continuous Scream: In the Adventures in Hatchtopia episode Flower Power, seeing the Pixie Glittering Gracie for the first time causes Puppit to let out a yell of shock, which prompts Gracie to scream right back.
- Ridiculously Cute Critters: The series runs on this, with special note that the Hatchimals are child-like creatures who are known to hatch from eggs.
- Secret Character: The Golden Lynx is hidden among Season 2 eggs, with only 250 of them in existence. Like a golden ticket, it was part of a promotion to give out exclusive items to those who found them with proof.
- Simon Says Minigame: The game "Hatchimal Says", where the owner has to help the Hatchimal correctly follow a sequence of actions as determined by their eye color. Renamed "Musical Moves" for the Fabula Forest variant, and "Catch the Wind" for the Mystery variant.
- Sugar Bowl Utopia: Hatchtopia is presented as such, with plenty of food, lush environments, and problems surmounting to small issues. Heck, it's even implied in the name.
- Talent Contest: Hatchimals Got Talent revolves around Team Hatch being unsure of what to perform for the Fabula Forest's Talent Show.
- Whale Egg: Semi-justified because most of the Hatchimals are part bird, as indicated by physical features and their names.
