It’s that man again. Following his failed Androbot venture of two years’ previously (oh come on, you must remember Topo, the robot controlled by your home computer?), Atari founder and originator of seminal videogame Pong, Nolan Bushnell, was back in the news with another answer to a question that hadn’t been asked. The Petster was a cuddly toy cat that skulked around the floor in response to hand clap or voice commands, and purred when stroked.

There was also a cuddly bear which talked back to its owner in cute bear language and a whole plethora of lesser glove puppets, including a duck, mosquito and dolphin, which all had their own electronic voices. Prices ranged from £39.95 for the bear to £89.85 for the cat. What a revelation, wrote the press of the day; pets which didn’t need feeding or soil dark corners and could even be taken on holiday. The idea was apparently inspired by Activision’s Little Computer People, which gave C64 owners a person who lived inside their computer.

Despite initial success in the US (which was hardly unexpected – they hadn’t long recovered from the ‘pet rock’ craze – I kid you not), this idea was just a decade and a bit too early, as the success of ‘97’s Tamagotchis and ‘98’s Furbies (or was it Furbys? Damn this Alzheimer’s…) bore belated and not-so-mute testimony to. Don’t feel too sorry for Nolan though. Unlike many of the early innovators, he still had a few bob to fall back on as a result of selling Atari to Warners in 1976 for an alarmingly large 28 million dollars. And that was when 28 million dollars was a lot of money…