it made me wonder what the first appearance of Pokémon was in any physically released product in general.
The Japanese GameBoy Game for Pokémon Red and Green were released in February 27th, 1996, way before the TCG even came into play. But, of course there are a bunch of things from 1995 that pre-dates these, as pre-release items for these games:
There is a pre-release flyer for these Japanese GameBoy Games. There are actually two versions of these posters.
One that mentions the original intended release date of the games, before they got postponed: December 21st, 1995[1]. Here a picture of that pre-release flyer:
(click twice to zoom in on this HD scan of the book cover)
So I now have a couple questions:
Are there any other physical items from 1995 that mention or depict Pokémon besides these two?
Was the pre-release flyer with the original date ever used / ‘released’ anywhere, or can those be considered prototypes and only the pre-release flyer with corrected intended date was actually used?
Although I assume both the pre-release poster and book came from December 1995, I’ve been unable to find any exact release dates for either. Does anyone know on what day in December the book was released; and pre-release poster was used?
What have you done I thought I had already picked up all the rare books.
Perhaps someone with access to the Gamefreak Doujinshi from the early days, has one that hints at pokemon.
There are a bunch on Amazon/eBay/Mercari, although only a handful. I actually bought a copy of this book before I made this post, since I couldn’t resist owning such an unique piece of Pokémon history.
Unfortunately, there seems to be a gap, since vol. 23 has a release date of September 13th, 1987 and vol. 24 has April 26th, 1999, and all the non-volume ones mentioned are from the 1980s.
But not sure if the scans in the link are all of them?
I’m very much looking forward to reading through the can of worms this thread is gonna open
Also, it’s fascinating that the hahbee™ is now almost 30 years old and there’s still not consensus on “what was the first Pokemon card” and similar questions like this one! Just goes to show the sheer density and scale of the franchise.
@thundermoo could break it down but I believe there were anniversary releases for Volume 24 and 25.
I actually own the Gamefreak one your link opens to and I didn’t realize it was the last one printed from the regular volumes.
Side note: what a great resource you linked!!
If they stopped in 1987 then you’re likely right that there are no mentions of pokemon before the anniversary prints.
Maybe I’ll spoil for everyone who already knew about this but it looks like the greeting cards Gamefreak gave out from 1993 might be the first pokemon official item
“Books of Hours were the medieval best-seller, and most could fit in your pocket. Many of these awesome manuscripts featured wondrous marginalia filled with monsters. And there you have it, Medieval Pocket Monsters. Their variety was so great, that we haven’t even caught them all! But here are some fun ones (from a single book) for you to explore (and the book is actually on view in our North Pavilion gallery)!” - WTF Art History [2]
This is correct, the only mention of Pokemon is in the Anniversary volumes. The Complete scans in the Internet Archives link are from the GAME FREAK leaks last fall and is the work of this third party company that was hired to digitally preserve these documents.
Edit: And thanks to these leaks you should be very very cautious collecting these going forward
I’ve been trying to track down the same thing for a while now, more specifically the first mass-produced/public announcement for Red/Green.
The 1995 date flyer was released at Nintendo’s Spaceworld event on November 23rd 1995.
Prior to that date there was an issue of Famitsu released on November 17th, 1995 that had previews of all of the games being shown at Spaceworld that was re-used for the event’s catalog on-site.
Here are pictures of the magazine & Pocket Monsters mention. It’s small, but it’s the earliest mass-produced/public thing I’ve tracked down personally. Notice the original release date in the info box. (Note that Famitsu issues hit stores 2 weeks before the cover date)
I thought I had already picked up all the rare books.
