Photo: Reuters.
By the time Pokemon landed in North America in 1999, it already had a fully formed media ecosystem. Above, a Nintendo employee displays Pokemon Gold, left box, and Pokemon Silver.
Perhaps because I never learned how to play video games, I missed out on the Pokemon craze. But now that Pokemon is celebrating its 30th year, I think it’s time to catch up. My kids were grownups when their own kids were into it, and John was so keen a few years ago, he could be seen wandering across streets absentmindedly following a Pokemon character that appeared on his phone.
What was it all about?
Philip Drost reported February at Canadian Broadcasting, “As a child, Satoshi Tajiri loved to collect and play with bugs in his backyard. As he grew up, he loved going to the arcade to play video games. So he decided to merge the two. The result? One of the biggest franchises in the world.
“ ‘Pokemon is almost a lifestyle at this point,’ Matt Alt, a Tokyo-based writer and author of Pure Invention: How Japan Made the Modern World, told [CBC’s] Sunday Magazine.
“[In February] Tajiri’s creation, Pokemon, celebrates its 30th anniversary, which it kicked off with a Super Bowl ad featuring celebrities such as Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, Lady Gaga, Trevor Noah, Jisoo, and Lamine Yamal discussing their favorite Pokemon. …
“Tajiri began working on a game for the Nintendo Game Boy in 1990. … Development took six years, but on Feb. 27, 1996, Pokemon Red and Green were officially released in Japan.
“Alt says when Nintendo realized it had a hit, it threw its weight behind it. It made comic books for the franchise, a cartoon series and trading cards — a common marketing practice in Japan, Alt says.
“By the time Pokemon landed in North America in 1999, it already had what Alt calls a fully formed media ecosystem.
“ ‘It hit like a meteor,’ Alt said. ‘It absolutely profoundly transformed the childhood fantasy space in the West.’
“Hanine El Mir was seven when her brother got a Game Boy Color, the follow-up to Nintendo’s original Game Boy. … Since then, El Mir has played every Pokemon game that’s been released, and now she studies video games at Concordia University in Montreal. Even the music from the games has an effect on her, she said.
“ ‘It transports me to a different time, a time with less responsibility,’ she said. ‘I’m on my parent’s couch not having to worry about anything, just playing for hours and hours during summer,’ said El Mir, who has researched the power nostalgia has over Pokemon fans.
“Pokemon cards, which cost just a few dollars a pack when they came out, can now sometimes be worth thousands — or in rare cases, millions — inspiring scalpers to snatch up as many as they can to resell.
“Then there’s Pokemon Go, an app that took the internet by storm by allowing people to catch the cute little creatures on their phone by walking around in the real world. …
“Pokemon’s intense popularity around the world has made it what’s known as a soft power, according to Shaoyu Yuan, a scholar of international relations and adjunct professor at New York University’s Center for Global Affairs. …
” ‘[Soft powers] don’t arrive as a policy memo, they arrive as a music playlist, weekend movie or TV show binge,’ said Yuan. ‘Once culture becomes a shared reference point, it quietly does something political.’ And that’s what happened with Pokemon.
“In the 1960s, Japan became an economic giant, which created fear in the Western markets, Alt said. This prompted the U.S. government to slap tariffs and restrictions on Japanese goods such as cars, electronics and appliances.
“But the government wasn’t worried about toys, action figures, video games or TV shows. …
“Alt said, ‘While the adults were trying to keep Japan out of American markets, they didn’t realize at the same time that Japanese fantasies were flooding in, and they were transforming us young people as we consumed them.’ …
“Pokemon will kick off celebrations for its anniversary on Feb. 27 [2026], the same day Pokemon Red and Green were released in Japan 30 years ago.
“And while the franchise continues to turn a profit, El Mir said the biggest challenge for Pokemon will be what happens when the nostalgia runs dry and those who grew up in the 1990s and early 2000s are no longer consuming these products. …
“But Alt said that over 30 years, Pokemon has managed to keep up with its younger fan base. In addition, the franchise has so many facets, from battling to collecting, that it brings in all types of people. …
“ ‘It’s really a testament, I think, to the vision and to the passion of Satoshi Tajiri. Pokemon not only continues to be alive, you know, decades after its release, it’s thriving. It’s not even Japanese culture anymore, it is global culture.’ ”
More at CBC, here.
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