The Pokémon Prize Pack

A long time ago, in the realm of 2000, there was a mystical thing called the "Pokémon Prize Pack". It was on Kids WB! a lot, and had lots of various Pokémon stuff come on screen, including Chikorita and Pikachu plushes. A Pojo.com text clip I got around that time mentioned that it "[included] Pokémon T-shirts, a Sound & Light Pokémon Yo-Yo, a Pokémon Walkie-Talkie set, a Pokémon mousepad and a Pokémon Triangle Gift set."

Now, I actually had a chance to win one of those things, because during the premier of Pokémon: The Movie 2000 (which I did go to), in the newspaper, there was a thing of how you could design an original Pokémon and win the prize pack. There were probably lots of great entries, and I ended up submitting a Pokémon based on a bottle of glue. While it was probably ahead of its time, after all, there's only now a garbage bag Pokémon, I think there only two things wrong with it.

1. The head was at the orange tip of the bottle, and had a face like Ditto's, not the anime-like eyes of other Pokémon.
2. The name. In a play on the word "glue": Glute. Unfortunately, you might guess how this could be seen as a bad thing.

I honestly thought I would win, but I didn't, and I'm betting the winner ripped something off. Ah well.

Where all the Pokémon books nowadays?

So I was thinking, why aren't there any good Pokémon books out there nowadays? I mean, even the Player's Guides have been offed for Prima guides (which are extraordinarily inferior), but where are the books, the ones that explained everything? I think the only non-guidebooks are Pokémon Visual Guide and Pokémon Ultimate Handbook. Nintendo has done a good job of squishing anything unofficial. Possibly because the fandom died down from the initial 1999 fervor, but one of my favorites is the "Pokémon Trainer's Guide" (Sandwich Islands Press, 1999). It's rife with minor errors and lazy writing, but it was a gem. It covered the first 52 or episodes, a section on toys, a walkthrough with information on Red, Blue, and Yellow, a Pokédex which covered movesets, Pokémon Snap, and a very abridged version of their guide to the TCG. Brian Brokaw, a contributor to Pojo.com (don't know if he still does) and creator of the "Haymaker" deck, wrote the TCG section.

I want to create a Pokémon book that covers everything. It would be quite a task--to envelope that era (1996-1999) in an even more awesome book that can tap into the nostalgia market and yet Pokémaniacs who were not yet conceived at the time. I wrote about it on Bulbapedia to get feedback, but they locked it, so I did what they said, transferred it to my blog. It would draw information from many sources (all cited, of course) and be pretty much the book I would've always wanted. I need a co-author, though. Any takers?

Pokémon TCG Online? Meh

Seems like Nintendo is finally creating a way to play Pokémon TCG online.

Now, this sounds like a great thing to us older fans, because...
1) We can finally play the TCG against other people, like kids, without looking like a pedophile
2) We all have fond memories of Pokémon Trading Card Game, the Game Boy game that had you battling computer players with Pokémon cards, with practically every single card available (that was released in America at the time)--plus some others.

Now, as for the reasons it's going to suck.

1) You have to buy preconstructed decks of the upcoming Black & White themed expansion to unlock the deck in it.
2) You can't build your own deck.

Of course, one way to fix this is to win cards after you win a match (a la TCG). That way, it's beneficial to play against multiple people. Flood the system with free virtual booster decks often so everyone wins. Appeal to the older players by releasing "retro cards" (remember the Fossil expansion?), and add in music. This music will feature rockin' music from original (maybe). And add in CPU players, too. And an offline playing feature.

Alternatively, they could just eschew all of that and release a brand-new Pokémon TCG game for the Nintendo 3DS. It would be a re-boot of the original game, with brand-new characters, hundreds and hundreds of cards (from Basic to Black & White), and all possible with the 3DS, with its rumored 8GB storage capacity. Fight your way through dozens of battles, only to find your most challenging foe at the end of the game: Mark, the guy from the original Pokémon TCG

It would be awesome, but unlikely. Let's face it, for all Nintendo is concerned, everything Pokémon from 2003 backwards is dead, ancient history. That was when Ruby & Sapphire came and made irrelevant Generation 1 and 2. And that was wrong.

So Long, Pikachu

This is a blog about Pokémon. Unfortunately, Pokémon has lasted far longer than it really has, and it saddens me to think that a lot of young Pokémon fans simply weren't alive when it came to being. That being said, this blog, while not inappropriate, is designed for adults 18+. Sorry kids, go home.


This is a website by and for the people that were around when the games first came out. We remember trading Pokémon via link cables. We remember how schools across the country banned trading cards (my elementary school did). We remember the Pokémon movie. If you're actually still into Pokémon, and actually bought "HeartGold" or "SoulSilver", that still doesn't disqualify you, if you remember Yellow version, or the original Gold and Silver, you're in. On the other hand, if you went into junior high with the deathly fear you'd be laughed out by your smelly middle school piers, sold your Pokémon cards, and took up a better hobby that would gain you real respect, but still look back at it with fondness, then, you are included too.

I haven't quite decided what I really want to post, but do come back! And leave comments!