Sarah's Pokémon Center New York Memories
The memories of a Pokémon fan called Sarah, highlighting her visits to the Pokémon Center New York store
The Pokémon Center New York store is a location we are huge fans of here at Johto Times, so it’s always great to hear more about the experiences that fans had visiting it. In this feature, we are sharing the memories of a Pokémon fan called Sarah and what she remembers from visiting the store, as well as a special item from the store that means a lot to her.
I was smack-dab in the target audience for Pokémon when Pokémania hit the world, yet somehow I avoided getting into it during its apex of pop culture dominance. I think I had a Pikachu plush, but that was the extent of it. Then Hoenn came along, and I saw a bookmark being offered at the school library that had Kyogre on it. Finding out there was an orca Pokémon won me over near-immediately.
Sapphire was my first game, naturally, and I devoured a lot of Pokémon media including games and the anime. I perused a lot of the Pokémon fan sites that have been chronicled here, such as The Cave of Dragonflies and TRsRockin. My favourite was The Secret Pikachu Hangout [previously a website, no longer online], whose admin was my closest friend for many years (we still talk every once in a while).
Perhaps of the most interest to Pokémon history in my life was having regular access to the Pokémon Center. As a lifelong New Jerseyan, New York City is a hop and a skip away rather than an elusive Xanadu, which isn’t a geographical privilege to take for granted. I loved buying Pokémon plushies there (along with nagging my mother to buy ones from eBay), and I remember my first plushies as a Pokémon addict were a set of eight from the Pokémon Center that included Pikachu and Psyduck.
Alas, I do not have many of my old Pokémon plushies anymore, nor do I have any pictures of the Center itself, but I do have my most cherished memento. I already had a Kyogre plush which my mother bought from a defunct Hawaiian store, but my parents bought me a second Kyogre as a surprise gift. This was a PokéDoll from the Pokémon Center, and due to his chibi proportions I nicknamed the new plush “Baby Kyogre” or “BK”. I even liked to portray him as his own character of sorts, basically a wunderkind, and he completely stole the thunder from my first Kyogre plush (which I no longer have).
I have other Pokémon Center memories, including obtaining special event Pokémon such as Deoxys, it being where I got Super Smash Bros. Melee (I only had interest due to the Pokémon and it kick-started my interest in other Nintendo franchises) and my dad waited in line to get FireRed and LeafGreen for me a few weeks ahead of its full statewide launch. The coolest memory was attending a trivia contest. [The way it worked was] all the participants were in a line, and everyone answered one question at a time. If you got it wrong, you were eliminated.
The last question I was given, I got wrong – it was about what Jessie valued the most, and I guessed her Arbok, but the correct answer was her hair. Luckily, everyone else was eliminated already, so I was still declared the winner. The grand prize was Pokémon Box, serendipitously one of the few Pokémon games I didn’t have.
I’ve been consistently on the Pokémon train ever since, [save for] a brief span where I forced myself to lose interest due to bullying. I still really wanted Diamond/Pearl deep down, and thankfully, Pokémon’s gravity on me won out in the end. Admittedly, the more recent games haven’t really held my interest, but I’ll always cherish the characters and the sprite era of games. I still visit the former Pokémon Center (now Nintendo New York) every once in a while, and in late 2024 I bought plushies of Pichu and a Statue of Liberty Pikachu, while my girlfriend bought a Charizard.
Special thanks to Sarah for providing her memories of Pokémon and sharing those great photographs of her Kyogre plush! We hope those cherished memories will continue to be of great comfort to her in the years ahead!