Pokemania

If you've somehow missed the eighteen times we've discussed it in Chatzy, Pokemon turns 20 this year and is celebrating with lots of merch and a new event Pokemon every month from now until December. While it didn't hit American shores until 1998, Pokemon debuted in Japan two years earlier, in February 1996. Initially a quiet release, word of mouth was substantial, and by 1997 Japan was wholeheartedly embracing Nintendo's latest RPG. Reception was so positive that Nintendo decided the game was worth releasing in other regions. They took a gamble and made a big hype campaign for Pokemon's western debut - the anime and the game released together, with the trading card game launching a couple months later. This was definitely a risk - what sells in Japan doesn't necessarily sell in other places, and a big deal was being made out of this fledgling series that rested all its' hopes on a very buggy and unbalanced game that came out on a system many considered long past its' prime. Nintendo COULD have had this blow up in its' face.

But it all paid off. Kids flocked to the series like nothing else, and reviewers praised the game's strong points - as poorly-balanced and badly-coded as the game was, it was just plain fun and introduced concepts that were rare in 1998, most notably the complete party customization. Again, it took a little time - according to Bulbapedia, many stores were initially unwilling to sell the card game, apparently believing it wouldn't be popular, HAW - but it took significantly less time to catch fire in the US than it did in Japan. No doubt the big push from Nintendo helped. By 1999, Pokemania was in full swing.

And brother, what a time to be alive.

Before I go any further - the name "Pokemania" was coined by a number of outsiders looking in on the phenomenon (speaking of, some also called it "The Pokemon Phenomenon"). I'm talking adults who were watching in confusion as kids fell in love with 151 Japanese cartoon animals, folks like newspapers, magazines, and third-party groups who released unauthorized guides to the franchise that often had errors but always had heart. Pokemania began at the end of 1998. It built up throughout 1999, and in fall of that year it reached its' peak. It remained strong throughout 2000 and had a grand sendoff in the form of Pokemon Gold and Silver, then slowly began to ebb away in the early 2000s as Pokemon degenerated from a worldwide fad to simply a cornerstone of Nintendo, an established household name brand people always know. By the time Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire released, Pokemon was just another franchise - albeit a tremendously popular and successful one.

Some of you might be a little too young to remember Pokemania, others might be a tad too old and didn't really pay attention when it was happening, considering it just another kid's thing. But me? I was the perfect target audience. For the first year of its' existence, I didn't really notice, but circa September 1999, I finally got hooked and had the ride of my life.

There's a lot I could talk about. The cards, the social interaction, the Game Boy games. But for the purposes of this post, I'm going to zero in on the toys. I've taken photographs of almost all the Pokemon toys I own, the vast majority of which are from 2001 or earlier, and I'm going to go over them in detail here.

Note that for all my posturing and fancy talk, I'm not much of a collector. These are toys that I heavily played with as a kid, and a lot of them are dinged up. You're not going to be seeing pristine museum pieces here. This is a part of my childhood laid bare for your amusement. That said, on with the pics.

Let's start with these big boys, standing around five inches tall each. Hollow plastic figures with simple rotating pieces are something I'm very familiar with thanks to my years accumulating kaiju toys (now THAT is more of a "proper" collection, that is), but Pokemon has had toys like that too, dating all the way back to the 90s. In Japan, these hard plastic figures were sold separately with swing tags. In the USA, they were placed in box sets of two and sold that way. Of the four figures, Charmander and Jigglypuff got the most playtime, and there's no real mystery as to why - in 1999, Charmander was my favorite Pokemon, and my little brother's favorite was Jigglypuff (though he also had a soft spot for Cubone, who didn't get much representation).

The Pokedex is wonderful, and I spent more time playing with it than I did some video games! It's got a primitive LCD screen and can display basic information about all of the original Pokemon (except Mew) as well as two animations for all of them - a basic stance and an attack. You can save a Favorites List  to view your favorite Pokemon easily, or search for them with multiple different criteria. It's also got a calculator function, and for a not-insignificant period in the early 2000s, I actually used this Pokedex as my calculator for school. It saw heavy use at the end of elementary school and throughout junior high before I got a "real" calculator in high school that I grew just as attached to. Compare this Pokedex, filled with animations and content, to the modern version... which is nothing more than a prop that makes noise and lights up. The description for the Kalos Pokedex mentions that kids can "pretend" to scan their toys. I may advocate all generations of Pokemon, but there's no mistaking that the Kalos Pokedex is AWFUL compared to the original.

...Although, now that I've looked it up, there's a new, top-of-the-line Pokedex for Gen 6 out there now with a touch screen, a large roster of Pokemon (though not all of them), multiple minigames, and other features. It does however cost 80 dollars, as much as two full-price 3DS games.

More bigger toys. These are electronic, and are a weird little bunch with many differences. Most of them make noise, some move, Charmander's tail lights up, and while most of them react to noise, Pikachu instead activates when pressed into your palm. One of the Charmanders was a birthday gift - my tenth birthday marked the first time I got a substantial amount of Pokemon merchandise, and it included that Charmander, packs of Topps Pokemon cards, an album to keep them in, and a massive plush Charmander. I loved all the gifts, of course.

I've never seen the Togepi or Eevee in action - oddly, different toys in this line take different batteries, none of them the standard AA or AAA. Thanks to never having the right battery, we could never use these toys "properly".

Going small now. These are erasers, I believe, but of course I never tried to erase anything with them. They've held up fairly well, aside from Eevee losing an ear many years ago.

The stumpiness, monochrome colors, and lack of details reminds me of the original Red/Blue sprites. Those sprites are adorably crude, and another example of something from the earlier generations that wouldn't fly today.

More tiny figures. The Hoenn trio were tiny bonuses that came alongside larger figures, which we'll meet soon. The cluster of Kanto Pokemon in front hail from "Mystery Mini" blind bags. We somehow wound up with several of them, and I don't remember how exactly. These tiny 1-inch figures seem almost like bootlegs in their crudeness, but they appear to be official products. I believe they actually made a Mystery Mini for the entire first generation, and it would make sense considering the unpopularity of Pokemon like Drowzee, Venonat, and Dewgong.

Mew and Totodile were originally inside rubber see-through balls, but after receiving the Blastoise as a gift from a fellow school kid and surmising that it came from one of those balls, I hacked open a couple duplicate balls I had lying around with scissors and freed the Pokemon inside. The ones still in their balls were lost circa 2006 or 2007, when I foolishly sold a number of Pokemon things at a yard sale for next to nothing.

The main focus of this shot is my collection of Pokemon Sliders. These toys used a ball bearing on the bottom to give them momentum when pushed, and a battle game could be played with them - but I never bothered with that, instead just using them as normal figurines.

The Gengar was originally a stamper, but the stamp part was removed to leave him as a normal figurine with a base. I'm pretty sure I had at least one other stamper, but it's gone now.

The smaller Pikachu is from a Gen 3-era handheld game called the Pokemon Virtual Trainer, which never saw any use in my household yet remains stubbornly in my possession despite me losing much more valued toys to time.

The larger Pikachu and the Psyduck in the back are anomalies. Found at a dollar store in the "late Pokemania" period, they don't have any branding and are soft and hollow. The store had a bin full of Pikachus and Psyducks and nothing else. I've long suspected they are bootlegs, but they fit in with the rest of the collection well enough.

Here's a random gathering of various toys. Lots to say here.

The Mew is a pullback wheeled toy and was picked up largely because I wanted a Mew figure, though even at the time I knew it was priced high for what it was (something like five bucks for a small pullback toy). I made do, and it saw a fair amount of playtime.

The Pikachu and Charmander on the left are Christmas ornaments, though only Pikachu still has the string. They're very solid and heavy, making them suitable only for a strong, durable branch.

The big Pikachu in the center was bought at a fair one summer, probably 2000. He's a bank, and is also probably a bootleg, since there's no copyright information on him and he didn't come in a box or anything, just loose. Like the squishy Pikachu and Psyduck, though, this toy is "close enough" and I didn't mind lumping it in with everything else.

The two Charmanders and the two matching Pikachus in front of them are cake toppers, and quite heavy ones too. The fact that I have duplicates means it's likely that Goopsbro got a store-bought Pokemon cake on his birthday in August, and my mom decided to give me a similar cake later that year for my own birthday.

The small Pikachu in the front is hollow with a hole on his underside. I don't even know how I got this one, and it might be another bootleg. Again, though, well made for a bootleg if so. Even better than the bank, in fact, since I always thought the bank looked a little off. The eyes are too small, and the pose is strange.

Remember when Poliwhirl was inexplicably one of the major movers and shakers of Pokemon merchandise? He's even the central figure of the famous Time Magazine Pokemon cover. It makes more sense when you know that Satoshi Tajiri, the mastermind of the franchise, loves the Poliwag line. I've seen both Poliwag and Poliwhirl given in third-party materials and translations as his favorite Pokemon. No idea what he thinks of Politoed. Anyway, this is a colored pen with a Poliwhirl topper. I don't know if it even still writes, but it gets to stick around because of that topper.

The pair of Pichus are from a cereal box promotion called Pokemon Cereal Bowl Pals. These figures were made to sit on your cereal bowl while you ate. In Pichu's case, it used its' tail as a hook. There were two other figures - Geodude and Arbok - but we only got Pichus. I believe I had a third one, but gave it away to someone else (mighta been Harpy). I think I would have preferred getting a full set to getting three of the Pokemon I'd want the least. :V

Speaking of cereal promotions, the last few toys unmentioned are also from such an endeavor. The four tops - Marill, Poliwag, and a pair of Pikachus - are cereal box prizes as well. They're a lesser version of the Burger King tops (which we will get to later) and are called Pokemon Battle Tops. Again, I missed out on my favorite - Jigglypuff was part of the promotion, and I would have much preferred a Jigglypuff to any of the ones I wound up with (Ledyba, Hoothoot, and Gengar were also among the toys in the series). You may be wondering why Marill is so beat up. Well, these came out in the later days of Pokemania, and although Pokemon never went away completely for me, a new interest rose up in 2002 to demand my attention: Battlebots. Thanks to learning about combat robotics, I spent many hours playing rough with any toy I could possibly conceive as a battlebot - including these toys. In an attempt to make Marill's "attacks" more impressive, I took a pair of Pulverizer hammers from my Battlebox playset and taped them to his front and back. When the tape inevitably fell off, some of Marill's paint went with it.

There's some great Pokemania-era stuff ahead, but I'm saving it for the finale. First, here's some stuff from after Pokemon hit its' peak. The Groudon and Kyogre figures date back to Ruby and Sapphire's release. I wasn't particularly happy with the radically different direction Pokemon toys seemed to take after 2001 or so - the simple Tomy figurines of old seemed to vanish, replaced by less durable and pricier action figures with unimpressive action features. That said, I did like these big figures, and I remember goofing around by listening to music and making use of Groudon's action feature to have him sing (if you press down on Groudon, his mouth opens. The package considered this good enough to be a "fire blast attack"). Kyogre, meanwhile, had a low profile, could lift his fins, bite with his mouth, and I found he made a decent top if he was spun in place... so I had him participate in the battlebots fights. Kids are a creative bunch when they want to be.

The Metagross figure is from the Emerald era of merchandise, just before the fourth generation arrived. There was a long period of time from the mid-2000s to around 2012 where I bought almost no Pokemon merchandise that wasn't a video game. Metagross here was a rare exception. I would have preferred a simple posable action figure - instead, he's non-posable and talks when a button on his head is pressed.

Continuing on, here are some early Hoenn toys as well as some figures from the Jakks Pacific era. Around the fourth gen, Jakks Pacific got a hold of the Pokemon toy license and began cranking out these action figures, which were larger than the classic tiny Tomys and had posable parts. Unfortunately, Tomy keeps things simple for a reason - it lets them make as many different Pokemon as possible - and Jakks came nowhere close to providing fans with every Pokemon. That said, I really like this Porygon figure, and good figures of any of the four Pokemon here are hard to find.

Now, as for those Hoenn toys, these are the figures those tiny Hoenn figures from a while back were packaged with. Their action features are nothing special - Sharpedo's bite is the most impressive, while Lairon's headbutt is absolutely pathetic (a tiny shifting of the head and tail forward and back). If you're wondering why Sharpedo is mangled, about five minutes after I got home with Sharpedo, the family dog chewed up both his fins. At least I got to play with Sharpedo intact on the ride home.

McDonald's is the license holder for fast food toys of Pokemon, and they've been doing a promotion every year since Black and White's release. They've provided some good quality toys that are similar in size to Jakks Pacific's efforts (Jakks lost their license early on during Gen 5, and Tomy figures are being distributed in the USA once again, albeit much more expensive than they were in 1999). Reshiram, Zekrom, and Zoroark are straight action figures. Kyogre can squirt water, Tepig's tail lights up, Snivy is wheeled and nods his head when pushed along, and Hoopa has bendy arms to toss its' hoop, but this feature doesn't work very well.

Aside from the Regi Bros Draco gave me, these are my only two modern-era Tomy figures (at this moment, that is - I actually bought three more this morning in a splurge moment when I saw they were at temptingly low prices). Diancie was a Christmas 2015 gift, while Vespiquen arrived last winter courtesy of Christmas 2014 gift money. Since Tomy figures are pretty pricey for what they are and are harder to find in stores, I haven't bought very many. If they were two or three dollars each, I'd probably consider assembling more of a collection, but they often cost five at a minimum and sometimes wind up going for as much as ten, which is simply too much.

Speaking of the Regi Bros, for the sake of mentioning them here are my old photos of my Regi collection. These guys never got all that much merch (though Gigas did well for himself in the Platinum era). The only new Regis I've gotten since then are a card stand from Burger King and a Regigigas plush from JRM last Christmas.

Ohhhhhh baby, that's the stuff. Original Tomy figures. My favorites. This was the core of my collection, and the toys I spent by far the most time playing with. All other Pokemon figures were adapted to work with the Tomys. The big ones became giants among them instead of playing in their own world.

I got these in all kinds of ways. Many were purchased at the local department store, the now-long-gone Ames, in the packs seen in the image at the start of this post. Others were gifts, sometimes loose from friends and sometimes in package from relatives. One of my favorite old memories, though, is unexpectedly finding a shipment of the original Japanese figures, in their original packaging, at the dollar store. My brother and I were stunned, and eagerly bought a bunch - but fewer than we'd liked. And, of course, when we went back the next week, they were all gone.

Some of these are very similar to the traditional Tomys, but not quite the same. For example, the Charmander next to the two Pikachus and the Poliwrath in the center were from a Pop-Tarts promotion that packed one of them (or a Chansey, the third and final figure of the set) into different boxes of Pop-Tarts. You had to buy a 12-pack of Pop Tarts to get the figure, but at least it wasn't random - each figure was tied to a specific flavor, and you would always get that figure if you bought that flavor.

The Lapras, the Horsea that isn't lying down, the Bulbasaur, the Jigglypuff, and the Pikachu behind Gloom were part of a special subset. These figures, a little smaller and cruder than the usual Tomy figure, had holes on their underside. They were meant to be placed on a peg inside a special Pokeball, which itself had a keychain attachment. Pokemon merchandise manufacturers apparently thought kids' key collections were just totally out of control, because boy howdy there were a LOT of keychains.

A lot of these toys took damage. I played with them a LOT, and some of their more delicate parts couldn't hold up. Squirtle and Wartortle lost their tails, Lickitung lost its base, and Charmander lost the flame on his tail. At least I wasn't responsible for Poliwrath losing a hand and whatever the fuck happened to that poor Onix - they came to me that way, Onix from another kid and Poliwrath found abandoned on the school playground.

Okay. One set of toys left, and it has some of my favorite anecdotes.

Guys, we need to talk about Burger King. Oh, but first, those keychains to the left and right used to light up. Jigglypuff had a long career in the late 2000s and early 2010s as the keeper of the family's USB drive back when we only had one, and we referred to it as "The Jigg Stick" as a result. When the drive stopped functioning correctly, Jigglypuff retired to the toy box.

Okay, seriously, we need to talk about Burger King.

Somehow, McDonald's didn't win the bidding war for the rights to do a toy line for Pokemon: The First Movie. No, Burger King, the number two fast food joint in the world at the time, was the lucky bastard to get to do that (and they did Pokemon promotions on and off right up until 2010, when McDonald's took over). In so doing, Burger King got to be at ground zero for the absolute fever-dream peak of Pokemania. Late 1999 WAS Pokemon. They were absolutely everywhere, Pokemon Yellow was out, and The First Movie was about to launch. Burger King simultaneously had no idea what they were getting into, and yet knew exactly what they were getting into.

Now, what I mean for that is, Burger King thought they were ready for this, and it really looked like they were. It was the biggest promotion in Burger King history. FIFTY-SEVEN different toys - that's over a third of the Kanto Pokedex - in all sorts of varieties. Pull-backs, squirters, tops, keychains, and a talking plush Pikachu were among the lineup. On top of that, every toy came with a trading card, and these cards were a brand-new, Burger King-exclusive set. There weren't any rares or holographics, but all 151 Pokemon got a card. And that STILL wasn't all - you could also purchase with your order a gold-plated deluxe "trading card". Each one (there were six) was kept in a plastic protective case which was then nestled inside a giant, gorgeous plastic Pokeball. This was then placed in a box (which could be either red or blue colored!) alongside a certificate of authenticity signed by the chairman of Nintendo of America. They were treating this promotion like it was the most important event in the history of fast food, and it might as well have been. I don't think anything communicates just how ridiculous Pokemania was better than Burger King's 1999 promotion. Sheer, glorious insanity.

So how were they not ready? Even with all that, they didn't expect the level of demand. At all. Burger King had to start introducing restrictions when crazed collectors arrived and began trying to order hundreds of meals with no intention of actually eating the food. The gold-plated cards sold out in hours each time a new stock arrived. The toys couldn't keep up with demand even after a meal-per-person maximum was instituted, and some kids got only a trading card with their meal due to the toy supply simply running out. Burger King did everything it could to keep up, and actually introduced a new gimmick to keep people occupied - a "Trading Night" held once a week for a month where kids could swap their cards and toys, no purchase necessary.

Unfortunately, there's no Burger King in my area, and never was, so I was unable to take part. Instead, I managed to acquire Burger King cards, a few toys, and even one of the golden cards (Jigglypuff!) via playground trading and, later, yard sales. A few years ago, I ordered a complete set of the cards, which came to me still unseparated. But at least I got a handful of the toys... even if one of them carried a terrible curse.

Oh, you have no idea.

It happened during elementary school, on the playground during recess. After he spied my Pokemon binder and saw I was "one of them", I was approached by a kid with a Venonat top from Burger King, which he offered to me for free. The reason? The kid who had originally acquired this Venonat believed the toy was bad luck, as misfortune began to befall him shortly after he acquired it. He passed it on to the kid who was talking to me now, and that kid, too, began experiencing a run of bad luck. He wasn't doing as well in school. He'd lost one of his rare cards. He tripped and hurt himself. And Venonat was to blame.

I was skeptical, of course, and had no issue accepting the toy. Unfortunately for those of you expecting hyper-realistic Venonats, nothing bad happened to me. The curse, if it ever existed, was broken. Perhaps it was because others treated the toy with disdain - Venonat isn't a popular Pokemon, and some would even call it ugly, but I like it and played with it often. However, the toy did eventually go missing. The one in these photos is a replacement I was ecstatic to find at a yard sale.

But maybe it's not a replacement. Maybe it's the original, somehow managing to come back to me.

Maybe he's been playing me for a fool all this time.

Maybe he's just waiting.

Thanks for reading half a million words about plastic anime critters!