Pokémon

In 1996, Francois Mitterand is no more, death somewhat offset by the birth of Zendaya Coleman, Idependence Day, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame or Mission Impossible dominate the world box office while the dance floors are set ablaze under Wannabe by the Spice Girls.

In video games, 1996 is also the release of the Nintendo 64, the end of production of the Virtual Boy and the beginnings of big licenses like Tomb Raider, Quake and Diablo. 1996 also saw the arrival of a license that would change pop culture forever: Pokémon. The best-selling game in Japan in the year of its release (ahead of Tekken 2 and Super Mario RPG), it is the brainchild of Satoshi Tajiri.

a

a

Passionate about video games, he created the “Game Freak” fanzine with his friend Ken Sugimori, a magazine that they transformed into a video game studio in 1989. In 1991, Tajiri saw for the first time the Gameboy Link cables, namely the connection cables that allow you to play in multiplayer. Passionate about insects (which earned him the nickname Dr Bug), he imagines insects passing through these cables from one Gameboy to another.

Sugimori draws the Pokémon while Tajiri takes care of the game systems, and on February 27, 1996, Pocket Monsters are released in green and red, each with exclusive pokémon. The start is sluggish, the console is at the end of its career and suffers from the arrival of the last big games of the super Nintendo (Donkey Kong Country 3, Star Ocean) and takes full force Resident Evil on the Saturn of Sega and the Sony Playstation.

Little by little, positive word of mouth is set up, however, and Tajiri takes out his secret boot: a secret Pokémon called Mew, and added during the debugging phase, exists. CoroCoro Comic (a manga magazine specializing in video game adaptations) offers a contest with 20 winners who will win this Pokémon not found. 78,000 entries later, the contest ends and Tajiri's plan goes to perfection, the Pokémon myth is on everyone's lips and players are forced to trade the coveted Pokémon between them via the infamous Link Cable. After this master stroke, the game exploded and remained at the top of Japanese sales for a year and a half and a blue version was created first exclusively reserved for CoroCoro Comic subscribers then marketed in 1999. Redacted from several bugs and highlighting star Tortank, the ultimate evolution of the third starting Pokémon (where the two previous versions highlighted Florizarre and Charizard), this version completes the dedication of Pokémon as a phenomenon and of this game the first game to exceed 10 million sales in Japan.

Arriving in the United States in 1998 and then in Europe in 1999, the two games will exceed 11 million copies in Uncle Sam's country and will stop just before 9 million in Europe. The game is generally well received, but will suffer from its weakened technique, the fault of a host machine on the decline.

This colossal success will export the Pokémon to other media. First in a collectible card game with the support of Wizard of the Coast (American publisher of the famous Magic franchise), in manga then in animated series, series which now has more than 1000 episodes and more than twenty feature films including Pokémon, the film or the recent Detective Pikachu.

The rest, you surely know it: several generations of Pokémon, dozens of games, derivative products of all sizes and at all prices, the wave of Pokémon go and a total anchoring in the world cultural heritage.

Regarding its impact on France, Pokémon will have contributed in a massive way to continue the establishment of Japanese animation on television, an establishment already well underway by the Dorothée club from 1987 to 1997. It was not without clashes with, in particular, accusations. of violence (accusation that the series shares with the card game described at the time as haunting for young blond heads) and especially a gigantic debate on epilepsy. On December 16, 1997, the episode "Virtual Soldier Porygon! Caused convulsions and discomfort in more than 700 people, 200 of whom remained hospitalized for more than 24 hours. Five seconds of the episode turned out to contain a flashing red and blue lightning bolt that was a bit too strong for our photosensitive friends. Never rebroadcast, nor even released outside of Japan, this episode caused the series to stop broadcasting for a year!

But if there's one thing Pokémon has been a catalyst for, it's collection, whether it's virtual in video games with creatures to find / trade, or real with playing cards.

In Toy design, we could bring this idea of different generations of collectible Pokémon closer to the blind box phenomenon with different thematic series containing more or less rare figurines and a surprise aspect that promotes exchanges.

ALL our BLIND BOX HERE

Another example is Pikachu by Daniel Arsham, which proves his mastery when it comes to hijacking, with respect, monuments of pop culture. For the record, Pikachu is the only Pokémon to have the same name in all of the countries in which Pokémon exists, which partly explains its popularity.

 
Toy Design always but this time visiting our friends at Nanoblock with a whole collection of Pokémon to assemble yourself!

ALL OUR NANOBLOCK POKEMON HERE

Finally, it's hard to part without mentioning the Bearbrick Pikachu flocky 1000% which will arrive in a few weeks on our site ... But shhh, this is secret information reserved for regular readers of our blog.