Pokémon, one of the most famous franchises in recent pop culture, turns 25 on Saturday.
Video games, cartoons, playing cards… In a quarter of a century, it has been available in multiple formats, each as popular as the next.
Generations go by but Pikachu and his friends are forever in fashion.
REPORT
If you grew up in the 1990s or 2000s and you are told "catch them all", normally you should yell "Pokémon!"
The credits of the cartoon have excited generations of children from their first notes.
And this is still the case in 2021, when the license turns 25 on Saturday.
The very first video game,
Pokémon Red & Blue
, was released on February 27, 1996 in Japan.
In a few years, Pikachu, Squirtle, Charmander, Bulbasaur and the other little monsters have become the stars of playgrounds thanks to playing cards.
An intergenerational phenomenon that is not about to run out of steam, as Europe 1 has seen in a specialized store.
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Few players, many collectors
While the school holidays are in full swing in Paris, the UltraJeux store is always full.
A stone's throw from Place de la Bastille, in the 11th arrondissement of Paris, it is a well-known haunt for card and board game lovers.
The weather is nice and surprisingly good Thursday when we have a head in the afternoon but the teens are there, inspecting the packages, or "boosters", to expand their collection.
And Pokémon is still popular.
"It was a very popular license from the start and it has never wavered," says Jean-Christophe Taisne, manager of the store opened in 2004.
Along with Yu-Gi-Oh and Magic, Pokémon is the license that runs the store, sells merchandise, and hosts amateur tournaments.
"Those who play Pokémon are rare. Sure, it's a card game with rules, but it's actually quite complicated and not many people bother to understand it, especially children," he explains. -he.
The bulk of buyers are actually collectors, those who have taken Pokémon's slogan: "Catch 'em all" at face value.
"They are mainly children, teenagers and young adults," notes the boss of UltraJeux.
Fans who are looking for missing cards and don't hesitate to buy and sell individually.
The Pokémon phenomenon is timeless
Among them, Joshua, 16, took advantage of the holidays to take his scooter to the store.
As soon as he enters, he pulls out two shiny Pokémon cards, obviously rare, protected by a sleeve.
"I would like to sell them but I don't know the price," he explains to one of the employees.
After a quick search, the answer comes out: around 500 euros for one of the two cards.
The teenager unhooks his jaw in surprise.
But no luck for him, UltraJeux cannot buy them because the cards are not certified by a specialized company.
No problem, he will try his luck elsewhere.
"The craze is cyclical. Every 2-3 years, we observe a comeback of Pokémon. Today, we are at the top of the ridge," says Jean-Christophe Taisne.
And the manager of the shop took the example of a Pokémon box set, "Radiant destinies", containing three packs of 11 cards and a new one: "We sold 1,500 boxes in 24 hours. There will soon be other boxes. but for this one, it is finished, there is no more and we will not have more. "
For Sever, employee and collector himself, the current revival of interest is linked to Covid-19.
“People were confined to their homes so they had more time to look at the sales sites and they bought en masse,” he says.
© BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI / AFP
This is the case of Joshua for example.
“I've known Pokémon since I was little, but I didn't really play. I collected a bit, watched cartoons and played video games,” the young man recalls.
"I quit in college but saw that it was going up right now on Twitter and Youtube. So I pulled out my cards, thinking they might be worth a little money and I came to check in store. My mother gave part of it to associations but I still have a lot, "he says, admitting the" nostalgic "side of his approach.
A sales record with a $ 500,000 card
If Joshua is not far from pocketing a small jackpot, he does not play in the category of investors, the third type of client identified by Jean-Christophe Taisne.
"They are speculators, those who transform the cards into an investment or even a business", analyzes the specialist.
“There have always been Pokémon cards bought or sold at very high prices. Right now we are hitting records just because there is more demand for rare cards and very little supply."
High prices and even a record: a few days ago, a first edition Charizard was sold on e-Bay for… 500,000 dollars!
© eBay screenshot
Charizard, one of the first generation Pokémon, is the most sought after card on the market.
Pokémon has been organizing scarcity from the start: the little animals are recycled regularly, but the original editions are the most sought after.
"These are old maps, printed 15, 20 or 25 years ago, from the first editions that we no longer find as they are," says Jean-Christophe Taisne.
To panic the counters in this way, the cards must also be in excellent condition.
Two new Pokémon games and… a song by Katy Perry
Sever, he doesn't have the budget for this kind of madness.
But he is always on the lookout to complete his collection.
"I buy the packs and boxes hoping to find the cards that interest me. Otherwise, I specifically look for certain Pokémon on specialized sites. I only collect rare cards or those that are close to my heart," says- he, specifying that he is ready to put "between 500 and 1,500 euros for a card, provided that it is irreproachable, without scratch, without defect".
"I'm not doing it for financial gain. I collect the cards for fun, I don't resell them."
Pokémon in a few crazy numbers
- 368 million games sold since 1996
- 1 billion downloads of the Pokémon GO mobile application
- The Pokémon card game is sold in 77 countries and translated into 13 languages
- The Pokémon cartoon spans 23 seasons and 1,000 episodes
- the Pokémon brand generated $ 4.2 billion in revenue in 2019
The market is currently very lively.
On eBay, the benchmark site in the field, Pokémon is the card game with the most ads (over 1.7 million).
Transactions exploded in 2020: + 574%!
With the 25th anniversary celebrations of the license, the fireworks display is far from over.
Two new games were announced on Friday: a
Pokémon Diamond and Pearl
remake
, originally released in 2006, and
Pokémon
Legends
: Arceus
, the saga's first open-world adventure, slated for 2022. In the coming weeks, and months, Special events are scheduled, including a Post Malone concert on Saturday and a special Pokémon song by Katy Perry.