It's time for everyone's favorite end-of-summer tradition: insomnia
Sunday scaries keep you up last night? You’re not alone.
Google searches for “how to fall asleep fast” doubled yesterday, according to Google Trends data. Searches for the phrase peak every August and January (as do searches for “melatonin”), coinciding with the start of schools’ fall and spring semesters.
Studies have found that anxiety – like the kind you might experience the night before an event – often results in loss of sleep. Insomnia is also known to be seasonal: A study in Japan found that people there experience insomnia at higher rates around April, which is typically when school semesters start.
If you were a ’90s kid, you might remember the craze around little egg-shaped toys with an 8-bit digital screen, displaying an ambiguous pet-thing that demanded food and attention.
Now, on the brand’s 30th anniversary, the Tamagotchi —theJapanese pocket-sized virtual pet that launched a thousand cute and needy tech companions, from Nintendogs to fluffy AI robots — is making a minor comeback.
Sherwood News
Looking at Google Trends data, searches for “tamagotchi” spiked in December in the US, up around 80% from just six months prior, with the most search volume in almost two decades.
While the toys are popular Christmas gifts, with interest volumes often seen ticking up in December each year, the sudden interest might also have something to do with the birthday celebrations that creator and manufacturer Bandai Namco are putting on, including a Tokyo exhibition that opened on Wednesday.
Game, set, hatch
More broadly, modern consumers appear to have a growing obsession with collectibles (see: Labubu mania), as well as a taste for nostalgia (see: the iPod revival, among many other trends).
But, having finally hit 100 million sales in September last year, the brand itself is probably just glad to exist, giving a whole new generation the chance to experience the profound grief of an unexpected Tamagotchi death.
Disney could be well on its way to its third billion-dollar film of the year following a $345 million opening weekend for “Avatar: Fire and Ash.” The film’s opening gross puts the “Avatar” franchise’s total box office earnings at $5.6 billion — and counting.
The latest film, the second “Avatar” entry under Disney’s tent, earned about 75% of its total box office gross internationally — in line with previous movies in the (as of now) trilogy. Domestically, this one earned $88 million, falling short of expectations.
“Fire and Ash” was the widest Imax release ever, debuting on 1,703 screens globally and earning $43.6 million through the format. The $345 million “Fire and Ash” opening weekend was the second-highest of 2025, behind Disney’s “Zootopia 2,” which recently passed the $1 billion mark, globally.
Year to date, Disney has earned $5.8 billion globally at the box office.
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