As Pokémon celebrates three decades of pop culture dominance, what is the secret of the franchise’s success and how can it be maintained for the future?
This week one of the world’s biggest media franchises turns 30. It marks three decades since the release of Pokémon Red and Green Versions in Japan, on February 27th, 1996. It took three more years for the Westernised Red and Blue Versions to make it to the UK but the end result was the same: a complete Pokémon takeover.
The games were an instant success, with sales of over 31 million worldwide, making them still the highest selling Pokémon games ever and, when included with the anime-inspired Pokémon Yellow, have been cited as the seventh best-selling games of all time.
Generation I of Pokémon brought with it the first 151 pocket monsters, your first taste of exploration in the Kanto region, and a novel form of connectivity to catch ‘em all, involving trading exclusive pokémon that are only present in each of the two versions.
After the anime launched in Japan in 1997 (and reached the UK in 1999), Pikachu, Bulbasaur, Charmander, Squirtle, Jigglypuff and Mewtwo – to name a few – became household names, alongside Ash, Misty, Brock, Jessie, James, and Meowth. Ash’s 25 year long journey to become a Pokémon Master is a core memory for multiple generations, with his adventures taking him to the big screen in 24 different movies.
Currently at over 1,350 episodes, the anime has continually aired, almost uninterrupted, since it started – discounting a few breaks and one significant incident hospitalising nearly 700 children in Japan, and banishing Porygon and its evolution line from the anime for a very long time.
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Ash’s journey came to a close as he achieved his goal in 2022, becoming the world’s greatest Pokémon trainer, which was covered on major news outlets around the world and was even played on the billboards of Tokyo’s famous Shibuya Crossing. The anime continues airing weekly in Japan, following new trainers on their respective journeys.
This moment harks back to the days of the original Pokémania, that swept the world during the late 90s and early 2000s.
‘What may be harder to survive is the relentlessness of Pokémania, a multimedia and interactive barrage like no other before it, with children mesmerised into cataloguing a menagerie of multiplicative monsters, with trading cards linked to games linked to television shows linked to toys linked to websites linked to candy linked back to where you started – a pestilential Ponzi scheme,’ described Time Magazine in a 1999 cover story.
It was hard to escape Pokémon at the time, with Burger King toys, Kellogg’s cereals, Heinz collaborations, clothing, and everything else imaginable. The Trading Card Game arrived at around the same time, a co-ordinated attack on parent’s bank accounts, so it seemed.
However, the demand for the cards has only increased over time, with shortages of English language cards occurring on a massive scale in recent years, with most stockists in the UK seeing their cards disappear in seconds or being simply unable to order them in – heights even Pokémania didn’t even hit.
Multiple card stores globally, including in the UK, have been targeted in burglaries specifically looking for rare Pokémon cards. Demand vastly outweighs supply, with The Pokémon Company having to open a huge new card printing facility in the USA. The era of influencer market manipulation has made it very difficult for ordinary fans and children to get the cards they want, culminating in Logan Paul selling the rarest card in the world for a record-breaking £12.1 million.
As new generations of pokémon were introduced it was also time for remakes, starting with FireRed and LeafGreen in 2004 on the Game Boy Advance, modernising the low-tech originals and fixing major glitches, like the infamous Missingno, and even including an Easter Egg hidden item as a nod to the playground rumour that Mew could be found under a truck near to the S.S. Anne in Vermillion City.
Despite there now being over 1,000 pokémon, the series has never been able to escape the fascination of the original 151. Naturally, that’s where Pokémon Go (celebrating its tenth anniversary this July) started, as hordes of fans and ordinary people descended on parks and landmarks with a tight grip on their phones. For a series initially written off as a fad, Pokémon has never faded into obscurity and never relied on exactly the same products to keep it in the zeitgeist.
Pokémon Go, at its peak, hit 200 million monthly users, and in 2020 surpassed earnings of $1 billion. Go still booms, with continued updates, and a spot in the world of competitive Pokémon, alongside the Trading Card Game, the mainline video games, and spin-offs such as Pokémon Unite. The competitive world thrives, with last year’s Pokémon European International Championships in London drawing 14,000 attendees, which was then beaten again for this year’s event.
As for what’s next for the franchise, it’s difficult to say, but Pokémon Day on Friday will likely bring with it the announcement of Generation X and new games for the Switch 2, as well as more information on mobile-focused Pokémon Champions, the imminent Pokopia spin-off, and no doubt updates for the Trading Card Game and more.
The original games and their pokémon still hold a strong nostalgic pull but Pokémon has maintained its success over the decades by learning to balance affection for the past with the need to see and experience new things. Fad or not it wouldn’t be surprising if the next 30 years of Pokémon were even more successful than the first.
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