>>11432670
It's probably a case of different interests between the two fanbases. Westerners primarily know about Tamagotchi through the vpets rather than supplementary material, Connection era had more mainline Western releases compared to Plus (v2 and Music Star have no proper Japanese counterpart), and post-Connection Tamagotchi in the West was in a pretty dire state with Tama-Go being a commercial flop. For Westerners, the Connection v-pets is what tends to get associated with this era since that's what it was mainly defined by.
At the same time, Plus era in Japan had less entries and pivoted quickly into the +Color and anime era, so the franchise never really "died" there so there's less nostalgia for the vpets by themselves. The Corner Shop/Puchipuchi Omisecchi series holds stronger nostalgia both due to it having more entries (there's 8 in Japan compared to the 3 in the West) and its dialogue being much funnier leading to its meme status with people falling in love with otherwise forgotten characters. I don't want to bring /v/-tier localization/translation arguments here but the English script for Corner Shop didn't do a great job at translating character speech patterns and verbal tics (Mametchi's stiff, cold delivery contrasted with people talking normally, Marutchi's childish bluntness, etc) so a lot of the humor was lost. The funny dialogue's what led to people looking back fondly on the Plus-era in Japan, seeing it as a slightly unhinged but relatable world.