There was an AMA on Reddit and this recently-published article was posted in the comments. I can’t vouch for the author’s credibility, but it contains some pretty interesting revelations about Nintendo’s takeover of Pokemon from WotC. It also contains audio of interviews the author did with former WotC employees.
A couple revelations from the article that I found interesting:
Previously unreleased Jamboree cards were included by Nintendo in EX Sandstorm (apparently to the chagrin of WotC)
Pokemon was basically the testing ground for WotC to employ tactics that they were too late to try for MTG (i.e., significantly reducing the number of cards per booster pack)
Anyway, again: I can’t vouch for the author of the article nor his conclusions. But there’s definitely some interesting info in here that I wasn’t aware of. Figured some others might also find it interesting.
In theory, this is the article I’ve been waiting for my entire life. I dropped everything to read it. But the article itself is really odd. The casual and comedic tone is very distracting. There’s no transcripts for sound clips. The formatting is very bizarre with super short paragraphs, so it’s like reading the entire article one Discord message at a time. I feel very… unfulfilled. This is not how I expected to finally receive these revelations.
But on a more positive note, this is really exciting insight. There is one detail I’d like to corroborate, which I am kind of excited to have the opportunity to do. Like 7 years ago, I talked to someone who alleged to be a previous WotC employee who reminisced with me about their time working with Pokémon. I took them seriously at the time and did not question their claims, but as time went on I was more and more sheepish about claiming to have spoken to someone from Wizards. I did not really know for sure they were who they said they were. But they had said something that just showed up again in this article.
One of the things we talked about were owner’s Pokémon, here called named cards, in the form of trainer-owned Pokémon in Gym Heroes and Gym Challenge. As the story goes, these cards were annoying and unpopular at Wizards. They felt they were too specific and detracted from the appeal of Pokémon - that they could be yours - and the sets were too rigidly themed to be thematically compatible with other existing sets. But most importantly, they could not be reprinted or rereleased by Wizards, so Wizards already viewed them as sort of “dead cards” - a lot of work to localize and release two huge sets with no competitive longevity. They would have no way to maintain their presence in the official rotation.
According to the person I spoke to, the reason they couldn’t be reprinted in any way was due to the additional brand management associated with depicting canonical Pokémon characters. While Pokémon themselves were generic, named Pokémon characters are specific and are subject to more restriction and sensitivity with how and when those characters are depicted. So every individual depiction of a certain trainer’s Pokémon, even if the trainer themselves was not depicted, had been reviewed and approved by the Japanese arm of the brand.
It’s neat after all this time to have something that person said show up again independently. I have no contact with them anymore, but it’s cool to think maybe they were legit.
Yeah, I definitely would’ve formatted the article differently. I’m particularly disappointed that the author didn’t include complete audio interviews and instead opted only to include random snippets. Still, some really interesting info in it (much of it seemingly credible).
Ok, a couple of other interesting tidbits from the article I just found (for some reason I missed these on the first read-through):
According to Mike Boozer, Prerelease Raichu was officially produced by WotC and there were approximately 13 of them.
Mike Boozer had boxes of Skyridge that he sold years ago (implies to me that other WotC employees likely also had sealed Skyridge product – maybe saved from the warehouses of product that were trashed?).
This I can definitely believe. The expiration of the license left a lot of unresolved projects and interrupted pipelines. It stands to reason WotC was left with lots of inventory they couldn’t legally sell. If they knew the product had to be destroyed and there was absolutely no future with the brand, might as well let staff sneak off with whatever they can.
When a business I worked at was closing down, staff pillaged everything they could. Even if it was more discreet, I’m sure it was no different there.
It also is consistent with accounts I’ve heard of hoards of Skyridge sealed product being sold online in the mid-late 00s.
It could also explain, perhaps, why Skyridge has such a high PSA pop relative to the raw supply. The supply of raw Skyridge is absurdly low – lower than any other English set in the TCG. But Skyridge holos have abnormally high PSA 9 and 10 pops.
For instance: Skyridge Alakazam holo has 305 total copies graded with 221 of those being PSA 9s and 10s (72% of the total pop). In contrast, Expedition Alakazam holo has a total pop of 330 but only has 191 PSA 9s and 10s (58% of the total pop).
This discrepancy (which exists in all the holos, not just Alakazam) could easily be a result of “mass” Skyridge sealed product openings from the late-2000s to mid-2010s. If so, it explains why raw Skyridge is so much scarcer than the pop reports imply that it would be – the pop reports were simply inflated by Skyridge sealed product that was (relatively) recently opened.
I’m almost positive that’s Mike Gills on the card. He was Master Trainer Mike whereas Mike Boozer was Dark Master Trainer Mike, but Gills loved Weedle lol
EDIT: Maybe that context already exists in this thread and I missed it
This person messaged me about this awhile back, and was extremely vague about details. Ultimately if those yellow cards are real, they are so easily replicable. But if that weedle card is real that is pretty cool!
Some cool history about e-Reader cards near the end. Almost seems to imply they couldn’t be printed in Japan? But I don’t think that could be the case when you consider the non-Pokemon Nintendo e-Eeader cards.
