The Legacy of Pokémon - Part 1 (Origins)

A record of the personal journey of a Pokémon fan, from the very beginning

Pokémon Gotta catch 'em all! Poster

For over twenty-three years, the Pokémon franchise has been a constant and welcomed presence in my life. This massively successful series started in 1996 in Japan, with the release of Pokémon Red & Pokémon Green for the Nintendo Game Boy by a company called Game Freak. Its huge financial success and popularity eventually found its way overseas, finally reaching Europe in 1999. It continued to dominate the lives of children and their parents’ wallets with an obscene amount of content and merchandise, such as toys, animation, trading cards, and video games. At twelve years old, it was impossible for me to avoid the craze that had captured the attention and imagination of kids throughout the world. Here, I will attempt to recount my own memories of the Pokémon series, and share highlights from my personal journey through a franchise that means so much to me.

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Origins

1999

My earliest memory of the series was during an IT lesson in 1999, where my classmates used the school’s computers to access the official Pokémon and Wizards of the Coast websites, to discover the latest information on the series and its trading card game. They were pretty much the only things my friends and classmates would talk about back then. I recall one kid from my year group named Kevin, who showed me his collection of trading cards inside a miniature folder. It was my first introduction to the game and he told me about the upcoming Pokémon: The First Movie, which was about to release across theatres in the United Kingdom (UK). He wrote down the film’s website URL for me so I could discover more information.

I spent most Saturdays watching the Pokémon anime on television, waking up early in the morning at around 7:30am to catch the broadcast live, or setting up the tape recorder downstairs so I could watch it later. I used the internet at school to keep up with the latest trends, but that was about as far as it went. Back then, my family didn’t have a lot of money and the idea of asking my parents to buy me Pokémon cards and video games was completely out of the question. While I was never ashamed of this fact, it did mean I wasn’t able to enjoy the series to the extent of other kids my age.

Gotta Catch Em’ All Pokémon poster featuring the first one hundred and fifty Pokémon

I think the very first Pokémon item I owned was a Gotta Catch Em’ All Pokémon poster featuring the first one hundred and fifty monsters. I remember my dad collected several tokens from his newspaper, and then we went into town to redeem them. I think the store was WHSmith, or possibly Woolworths. The poster used to be pinned on the wall above my bed. I tried hard to memorise all of them in order, but always struggled after around sixty. I remember going back to challenge myself repeatedly to recite them all in sequence, until one day, I actually managed it! The first merchandise I actually purchased myself were Pokémon stickers that were produced by Topps, and distributed by Merlin, which were far more affordable than the trading cards. I still have them completely unused because I never bought a sticker album to put them in!

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