The animated Digimon series is built on characters first used in Bandai hand-held LCD toys from June 1997. The story is set in a digital world, presenting on-going adventures of the young heroes and assorted digital monsters. Digimon has aired in Japan on Fuji Television Network since March 1999.

Broadcast in the United States of “Digimon” began in August 1999, on Fox Kids Network.**
From the very first episode it captured top share of all Fox Kids programming and was off to an extremely strong start as number two (after “Pokemon”) boy’s animated program on all networks. The rivalry with “Pokemon” has continued ever since, with the shows constantly trading places at the top. The fourth production of the Digimon series will be released this summer.
Bandai America started test marketing of Digimon character toys in November 1999, and full-scale release in 2000.**
The toys are now available at more than 7,000 retail outlets throughout the country, including Toys R Us, Wal-Mart and K-Mart, making America’s children smile. The Digimon target age group is 4 to 10 years old, substantially broader than the 4 to 6 year-old core group for Power Rangers.

The number of characters available as action figures in the US is overwhelmingly more than in Japan. Figure collections are more popular in America, and action figures other than the main characters sell for the sake of the collection.