Still the biggest draw of the year
Many people were surprised at Pokémon’s popularity. Indeed, many thought the Pokémon franchise was dead, like dodo birds or Michael Jackson. But as millions of dedicated fans proved, Pokémon is not dead; it is in fact very much alive.
For those of you who lived under a rock through the 1990s, Pokémon first arrived on the scene in 1996 in the form of Pokemon Red and Pokemon Green, created for the original Game Boy.
In the original, you play as a “Pokémon Trainer.” You roam around the land, catching creatures called “Pokémon” in order to train them and become the strongest Pokémon Trainer ever. There are 150 different kinds of Pokémon, each with its own distinct character, and if you had enough patience to catch them all, you were dubbed a “Pokémon Master.”
Pokémon quickly developed from a video game into a multi-billion dollar franchise with a hit T.V. show, a trading card game, plastic figurines, toys, plushies, songs, several manga series, and even a special version of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese.
Everything that could be associated with Pokémon was. The public couldn’t get enough, and it seemed as if the Pokémon craze would never die down.
Like everything else that was never supposed to die down, Pokémon eventually did. Around the turn of the century, The show began to deteriorate, popularity in the trading card game slowly died down, the last of the Pokémon shaped Mac n’ Cheese was eaten, and the video games were deemed “for nerds” and played quietly by a fraction of the old fans.
But as the new generation of Pokémon games came out, something began to happen. With the release of Pokémon Pearl and Diamond, a revival of sorts began to happen among the masses of Pokémon players. People began to talk of Pokémon out in the open, instead of in secrecy.
With the release of Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver, the floodgates burst open, and all was out in the open. People freely brought their Nintendo DSi’s to school, played the games in the halls, argued with their friends about the merits of choosing a fire-type starter Pokémon versus a grass or water-type. Pokémon experienced a huge resurgence in popularity among teenagers who had become disenchanted with the series. In the past year alone, it has reached levels of popularity reminiscent to those back in it’s heyday of the 1990’s.
The newest two Pokémon games, called Pokemon Black and Pokemon White, are scheduled to hit American shores sometime in spring of 2011, and are already generating a buzz among the millions of American fans. There is no doubt that Pokémon is becoming massively popular again.
