Pocket Monsters
The thirty year phenomenon about a boy's summer day.
The Sell-Off
When I started middle school I had reached the era of “coolness”. My interests in previous years leading up to that point I now considered to be childish. The clothes I wore, the games I played, the music I listened to…it no longer suited the teenage scene that began to surround me. It was 2001 and I had just entered the era of post grunge rock, baggy jeans, sports, and of course girls. To make room for my new closet of extra small band tees and CD tower stack, I had to purge all items that defined my childhood…but I also wanted to make a profit.
My mother was a savvy garage sale enthusiast, mostly a consumer, but occasionally jumping in on a friend’s sale to sell old items that were no longer of use in our house. On one particular garage sale, I decided to set up my own table and sell some items that were at one point very dear to me. Items that I had spent the previous few years collecting and trading to amass the ultimate collection of rarity. Kept clean in a zip up binder, this Saturday morning I sat at the table, taped up a pathetically self made “For Sale” sign, and opened up my Pokemon trading card collection.
Never much of a bargainer, I was a bit self conscious about making up prices for kids and their parents on trading cards, but nevertheless, I got into a rhythm. One dollar here, five dollars there, I was sort of making it up as I go. I didn't know the market value for these cards, but I was young enough to know the playground value. Holographic cards were the most desirable, so I marked those up. Others I sold for almost nothing or just tossed in with the more rarer cards. I remember being surprised about how quickly I made a hundred dollars, which for a twelve year old at that time was big cash.
I remember my most prized card was a holographic Charizard (generation 1). I don’t remember where I got it, but I knew I would price it the highest. I used to go the book store on the weekends and trade cards with other kids in town, and that may have been where I picked it up. All these cards, I should mention, were part of the base set that was released in 1999, which was the inaugural release of the card collection in the United States. Pokemon was big at this point, but I don’t think anyone (clearly not I) knew just how far this franchise was going to go. It pains me to write this, especially with the recent news of Logan Paul selling his Charizard card for almost a million dollars, but I sold my base set holographic Charizard trading card…for fifteen dollars.
The Origin
After I caught my breath hearing about Paul’s big sale, I lost it again realizing soon after that the Pokemon franchise just hit its thirty year anniversary. Very impressive that a franchise like this is still going strong without much sign of slowing down, but also that it had been thirty years since that time of my youth. An overall great lesson to be learned in both patience and the importance of holding on to your assets.
Pokemon, which is taken from the Japanese name for “Pocket Monsters” (Poke = Pocket, Mon = Monsters), was an idea conceived by a man named Satoshi Tajiri. Tajiri grew up in a suburb of Tokyo, spending lots of time in the natural areas around his home searching and catching various types of insects. During the time of his youth, Japan had begun to significantly recover from the recession it was left in post World War II. Many cities, including the area where Tajiri lived, began to expand. This suburban growth paved over the pond and field areas where he would look for insects, which now had been made into more of a concrete jungle.
Thereafter Tajiri attended school to study electrical engineering. During this time he started a video game focused magazine called Game Freak, which was a first at the time in Japan to have a magazine focused on the gaming industry. The magazine ended up folding, but Tajiri ended up using the name again to start his own video game developing company.
The concept of Pocket Monsters had a variety of influences. Tajiri had toyed with the idea off and on, but unsure of how to create a world for his vision. He had been an enthusiast of a Japanese science fiction series called Ultraseven. One of the main characters in the show carries an assortment of small ball like capsules which contain monsters (kaiju) that can be released when needed, growing to their original size when let out. When the Game Boy was released in 1989, it was advertised that the device would have a link port, allowing for users to connect and play games together on two different devices. Tajiri saw this device and knew it would fulfill his vision of allowing players to not only capture and battle these fictional animals, but also trade within the digital universe.
Long story short, Tajiri was able to present his idea to a subsidiary of Nintendo called Ape, which from there made its way up to the president of Nintendo. The response from the president upon hearing that idea was reportedly “This is it. This is the idea I've been waiting for." A development contract was signed, and after years of off and on development, the initial game(s) (Red/Green) were released in Japan in 1996, with the United States to follow two years later (Red/Blue) in conjunction with the American version of the popular anime show.
And the rest is history. Thirty years later and at this time, the franchise boasts twenty eight television seasons, twenty three animated films, video games across all Nintendo platforms (including mobile phones with Pokemon Go), merchandise, theme parks, etc. All motivated by a young man who desired to recreate a world that was taken from him.
The Lessons
I never knew the origin story of this franchise until last week. I’m not sure I would have appreciated it the same way if I had learned about it when I was much younger. I used to think that all great ideas were entirely original, including Pokemon, but that isn’t the case. Sure, the actual Pokemon are uniquely created as fictional characters, but concepts of the franchise were created with inspiration from other fictional art that came before it. The only difference is that Pokemon was done better. Can you imagine if Mark Zuckerberg forfeited his idea for Facebook because he thought that Myspace already capitalized on the social media market? Life changing.
There’s an inner child component to this as well. Tajiri didn’t choose to purge his childhood interests as he got older or when nature was stripped from him. He held on to those memories that brought him joy, and used that as a catalyst to create a universe that has spanned generations. It’s a lesson to all of us that while adulthood is inevitable, terminating childhood interests for the sake of age is a poor excuse. Selling off my card collection may have been the million dollar lesson to support that.
Should’ve kept them all.