Pokémon Planet
By Mark Lasswell, a contributing editor at Allure
from "TV Guide" April 24, 1999Pikachu, Bulbasaur, Mewtwo and co. invade Saturday-morning TV as the Japanese-cartoon "Pocket Monsters" rocket in the ratings
Hey, Power Rangers, better recharge those sabers. Dumb Bunnies, it's time to smarten up. Hercules, get a grip, big fella. Since WB began airing Pokémon on Saturday mornings (10 A.M./ET) in February, this cartoon spin-off of a popular Nintendo computer game has boosted the network's ratings so high, you'd think Wile E. Coyote had detonated a few sticks of Acme dynamite under it.
Pokémon (pronounced POH-kay-mahn) recounts the adventures of a boy named Ash Ketchum, who, with a Pokémon named Pikachu at his side, aspires to become a master trainer of the little critters by capturing all 150 of the wild Pokémon (meaning "pocket monsters" in Japan, where Pokémania has rung up $4.5 billion at cash registers since 1996). The cartoon has quickly become broadcast television's top-rated show among kids 2 to 11. On March 20, Pokémon catapulted WB's cartoon block to its first-ever Saturday-morning ratings win over all three kids-targeting networks (ABC, CBS, Fox) and cable's Nickelodeon.
Not bad for an animated TV show that eight months ago few people thought would ever catch on in the American market. And the naysayers weren't just worried about the infamous incident in December 1997 when 700 Japanese viewers (most of them children) suffered seizures caused by one of the cartoon's special strobe-lighting effects. (The sequences in question have since been deleted.)
"People said, 'We're not sure it'll work; it's Japanese animation; it looks awfully young,' " says Carlin West, senior vice president of marketing at 4Kids Entertainment, the company responsible for bringing the cartoon to the U.S. (Pokémon ran for a few months in syndication before WB snatched it up.) Retailers in general were initially quite leery of anything Pokémon, West says. Then came a raucous product launch on August 27 in Topeka, Kansas, with all the requisite hoopla, including a mayoral proclamation temporarily renaming the city ToPikachu.
The kiddie clamor has been building ever since, fueled by a steady, savvy rollout of video games, a card-collector set, and related merchandise raining down on us in a virtual Pokémonsoon. But why is this quirky set of characters so phenomenally popular? Perhaps it's their universal appeal. "This is the first time that I've seen a product that appeals to boys and girls, in all ago groups," says West.
That's the beautiful part--or the evil genius, depending how you look at it--of the Pokémonolith: It incorporates something for everyone. The Game Boy (a handheld video-cartridge player) incarnation of Pokémon demands strategizing, fighting, competing with other players and the trading of captured Pokémon--which sounds like a recipe that would appeal mainly to a particular kind of young male videophile. But there's a social aspect as well, because certain Pokémon can only be captured if two players link their Game Boys with a cable and share monsters. The game itself is so maddeningly complex (each Pokémon belongs to one of 15 elemental groups, such as fire, rock and water, and calculating the ebb and flow of their power would tax the department heads at MIT) that kids pick up tips by gathering around to watch expert players, known as Pokémon masters, in action. The Game Boy version may inspire a little too much competitiveness: Nintendo says a number of schools have banned Pokémon. "Don't bring your Game Boy to school; you should be in class learning--we agree with that policy," says Perrin Kaplan, a Nintendo marketing director.
Even kids too young to wield a Game Boy are drawn to Pokémon because the so-called monsters are actually cute little varmints with such names as Mewtwo, Charmander and the ubiquitous Pikachu. Younger fans may amass and trade this fanciful menagerie in sticker form. And any Beanie Baby-hardened child knows the torturous pleasures of collecting dozens and dozens of elusive characters.
Indeed, some of the furor surrounding the Pokémon craze stems from the fact that stores simply can't keep up with the demand. The Pokémon trading-card game, for instance, launched in January by Wizards of the Coast--the company that brought out the enormously popular card decks called Magic: The Gathering--sold 400,000 copies in just over a month. A shopping mall tour to sell and promote the game drew thongs of kids and their Pokémartyred parents last month--5,000 at a Miami stopover and nearly three times that many at a New Jersey mall.
Pokémon, in sum, is a canny combination of Dungens & Dragons, Magic: The Gathering, Cabbage Patch Kids dolls, pet rocks, the feed-me-or-I-die Tamagotchi virtual pets and just about any other youth fad that is now or is on its way to taking up permanent residence in America's attics and basements. Pokémon is covering all the bases: In addition to unloading more than 2.4 million Game Boy cartridges (125,000 is considered the benchmark of success), Nintendo has sold 800,000 Pikachu virtual pets; Hasbro is bringing out a Pikachu Plush toy, and Pokémon apparel is on the way. You name it--they'll Pokémon it.
All of this, of course, raises the inevitable question: Is this good for kids? Sure, the Pokémon craze is fun, but whipping up a young-consumer frenzy with the tag line "Gotta catch 'em all!" and unleashing a $14 million marketing offensive in the U.S. seems awfully avaricious--at least to Robert Regier, a policy analyst at Washington, D.C.'s Family Market Council. He complains that "marketing people are exploiting the kids' fascination with the game and the cartoon. Then they start dangling the toys in front of their eyes." But he says the council hasn't sounded any official alarms yet. Besides, Regier adds, "My nephew freaks out over it."
Wait till his nephew hears about the latest Pokémon plans. WB recently announced that this fall it will begin airing 52 new episodes of the cartoon on weekday mornings (7 A.M./ET) and after school (3:30 P.M./ET), as well as the current Saturday-morning slot.
Late this year, just when a significant portion of young America sighs with satisfaction at having finally collected all 150 Pokémon on the blue and red cartridges, Nintendo will launch gold and silver Game Boy editions--teeming with entirely new characters. Before that, though, on June 28 we'll see the company's Pokémon Pinball and Pokémon Snap games (the latter being a sort of paparazzi-in-the-woods challenge to take photos of every Pokémon). In the fall, the first feature film, a big hit in Japan, will be released here. Parents must be thinking that there's been a mistranslation somewhere along the line: Surely Pokémon means "pocketbook monsters."
Hey, Power Rangers, better recharge those sabers. Dumb Bunnies, it's time to smarten up. Hercules, get a grip, big fella. Since WB began airing Pokémon on Saturday mornings (10 A.M./ET) in February, this cartoon spin-off of a popular Nintendo computer game has boosted the network's ratings so high, you'd think Wile E. Coyote had detonated a few sticks of Acme dynamite under it.
Pokémon (pronounced POH-kay-mahn) recounts the adventures of a boy named Ash Ketchum, who, with a Pokémon named Pikachu at his side, aspires to become a master trainer of the little critters by capturing all 150 of the wild Pokémon (meaning "pocket monsters" in Japan, where Pokémania has rung up $4.5 billion at cash registers since 1996). The cartoon has quickly become broadcast television's top-rated show among kids 2 to 11. On March 20, Pokémon catapulted WB's cartoon block to its first-ever Saturday-morning ratings win over all three kids-targeting networks (ABC, CBS, Fox) and cable's Nickelodeon.
Not bad for an animated TV show that eight months ago few people thought would ever catch on in the American market. And the naysayers weren't just worried about the infamous incident in December 1997 when 700 Japanese viewers (most of them children) suffered seizures caused by one of the cartoon's special strobe-lighting effects. (The sequences in question have since been deleted.)
"People said, 'We're not sure it'll work; it's Japanese animation; it looks awfully young,' " says Carlin West, senior vice president of marketing at 4Kids Entertainment, the company responsible for bringing the cartoon to the U.S. (Pokémon ran for a few months in syndication before WB snatched it up.) Retailers in general were initially quite leery of anything Pokémon, West says. Then came a raucous product launch on August 27 in Topeka, Kansas, with all the requisite hoopla, including a mayoral proclamation temporarily renaming the city ToPikachu.
The kiddie clamor has been building ever since, fueled by a steady, savvy rollout of video games, a card-collector set, and related merchandise raining down on us in a virtual Pokémonsoon. But why is this quirky set of characters so phenomenally popular? Perhaps it's their universal appeal. "This is the first time that I've seen a product that appeals to boys and girls, in all ago groups," says West.
That's the beautiful part--or the evil genius, depending how you look at it--of the Pokémonolith: It incorporates something for everyone. The Game Boy (a handheld video-cartridge player) incarnation of Pokémon demands strategizing, fighting, competing with other players and the trading of captured Pokémon--which sounds like a recipe that would appeal mainly to a particular kind of young male videophile. But there's a social aspect as well, because certain Pokémon can only be captured if two players link their Game Boys with a cable and share monsters. The game itself is so maddeningly complex (each Pokémon belongs to one of 15 elemental groups, such as fire, rock and water, and calculating the ebb and flow of their power would tax the department heads at MIT) that kids pick up tips by gathering around to watch expert players, known as Pokémon masters, in action. The Game Boy version may inspire a little too much competitiveness: Nintendo says a number of schools have banned Pokémon. "Don't bring your Game Boy to school; you should be in class learning--we agree with that policy," says Perrin Kaplan, a Nintendo marketing director.
Even kids too young to wield a Game Boy are drawn to Pokémon because the so-called monsters are actually cute little varmints with such names as Mewtwo, Charmander and the ubiquitous Pikachu. Younger fans may amass and trade this fanciful menagerie in sticker form. And any Beanie Baby-hardened child knows the torturous pleasures of collecting dozens and dozens of elusive characters.
Indeed, some of the furor surrounding the Pokémon craze stems from the fact that stores simply can't keep up with the demand. The Pokémon trading-card game, for instance, launched in January by Wizards of the Coast--the company that brought out the enormously popular card decks called Magic: The Gathering--sold 400,000 copies in just over a month. A shopping mall tour to sell and promote the game drew thongs of kids and their Pokémartyred parents last month--5,000 at a Miami stopover and nearly three times that many at a New Jersey mall.
Pokémon, in sum, is a canny combination of Dungens & Dragons, Magic: The Gathering, Cabbage Patch Kids dolls, pet rocks, the feed-me-or-I-die Tamagotchi virtual pets and just about any other youth fad that is now or is on its way to taking up permanent residence in America's attics and basements. Pokémon is covering all the bases: In addition to unloading more than 2.4 million Game Boy cartridges (125,000 is considered the benchmark of success), Nintendo has sold 800,000 Pikachu virtual pets; Hasbro is bringing out a Pikachu Plush toy, and Pokémon apparel is on the way. You name it--they'll Pokémon it.
All of this, of course, raises the inevitable question: Is this good for kids? Sure, the Pokémon craze is fun, but whipping up a young-consumer frenzy with the tag line "Gotta catch 'em all!" and unleashing a $14 million marketing offensive in the U.S. seems awfully avaricious--at least to Robert Regier, a policy analyst at Washington, D.C.'s Family Market Council. He complains that "marketing people are exploiting the kids' fascination with the game and the cartoon. Then they start dangling the toys in front of their eyes." But he says the council hasn't sounded any official alarms yet. Besides, Regier adds, "My nephew freaks out over it."
Wait till his nephew hears about the latest Pokémon plans. WB recently announced that this fall it will begin airing 52 new episodes of the cartoon on weekday mornings (7 A.M./ET) and after school (3:30 P.M./ET), as well as the current Saturday-morning slot.
Late this year, just when a significant portion of young America sighs with satisfaction at having finally collected all 150 Pokémon on the blue and red cartridges, Nintendo will launch gold and silver Game Boy editions--teeming with entirely new characters. Before that, though, on June 28 we'll see the company's Pokémon Pinball and Pokémon Snap games (the latter being a sort of paparazzi-in-the-woods challenge to take photos of every Pokémon). In the fall, the first feature film, a big hit in Japan, will be released here. Parents must be thinking that there's been a mistranslation somewhere along the line: Surely Pokémon means "pocketbook monsters."