If you don’t understand a word that’s probably fine, because scenes like this one specifically speak for themselves. “This is where you threw all your Pokemon cards away?” “Yeah” “How did that feel?” “Actually pretty good, knowing it’s over now.”
It hurts, doesn’t it.
There’s even a Nintendo employee filmed amidst pallets of Pokemon product, talking about distribution and packaging. I’ll watch it in its entirety later today ^^
Do you know any old TV shows that warned about the evil Pokemon cards or just talked about the phenomenon? Post them here!
Some news reports from 1999 (most of which make at least some reference to Pokemon possibly being a bad influence):
Not really a tv report, but here’s a perspective of some comic book store employees from 2000 (who had the perspective at the time that Pokemon was dying):
Oh gosh, I didn’t even notice that part before:
Pokemon printing process shown at 07:06, including boxes with hundreds of the same holo cards and jungle boosters in bulk. I think I can’t take it Shouldn’t that be enough already for PSA to finally grade more than German Base Set?
A couple more fun parts:
See the Base Set Display amongst theme decks on the shelf at 23:10? I can’t even remember any WotC sets in stores (we grew up with EX cards), while Base Set cards were those weird half-destroyed relics everyone had in their collection but didn’t really know where they came from.
One mother, talking about Pokemon’s addictiveness: “It’s Pokemon cards now, but when I think about his future - what’s it gonna be in 10 years from now?” Well, in 20 it was probably Pokemon again.
It’s funny to think… Pokémon really was doing quite poorly as a collectible for the better part of the 2000s. The guys in the video are laughing that a massive glut of production killed the hobby and I think one reason values are strong today is because of that sentiment. If people had continued hoarding Pokémon like they did Beanie Babies waiting for prices to artificially rise, we would be in a very different market. It took almost 15? Years for a Base Charizard to go back to 1999 prices. They mention base holos being $8 minimum… For a very long time those were $1-2 cards. I remember pricing a list of WOTC holos I wanted at $2 each.
Exactly. I completely understand why everyone always comments things like, “I really wish I never opened that base 1st booster back in the 90s” or, “I wish I never opened that jungle 1st booster box” etc. because of the prices that we see today
but like, if you didn’t open those products back then and you just hoarded them right from the get go then pokemon as a collectible(at least wotc) wouldn’t be what it is today because not as many people would have been exposed to the individual cards and that nostalgia factor wouldn’t be as strong
tl;dr sharing is caring and it went a long way in this hobby lol
I just had a chance to watch the video you posted, and I was also drawn to the Pokemon names. Some of them are the same as the Japanese while others are distinctly native. Are there any that are derived from the English names?
I don’t think any name in this was pronounced properly One employee pronounced the German names like they were English words, meanwhile the reporter called an Entei (Entei in German as well) plush “Enton”, which is Psyduck in German. Many legendary Pokemon share their names in both languages, but most have some native pun in the same way the English do. A few examples like Nidoking&queen are clearly derived from the English names, since they’re not “Nidokönig/königin”. “Mewzwei” doesn’t really roll off the tongue either
@burnedos Haha. That’s funny. But at least Pikachu, Raichu, and Nidoking/Nidoqueen were pronounced correctly though, right? Like Mewtwo, those are names that come directly from the Japanese and are probably more or less the same in every language except for maybe Chinese.* (Does anyone know if there are any other languages that have exceptions for these?) In Japanese, Pikachu is Pikachū, Raichu is Raichū, Nidoking is Nidokingu, and Mewtwo is Myūtsū.
In any case, it’s interesting to know that there are some specific areas of overlap shared between the English and German names. I wonder what the development process for all of these things was like during the big explosion in the 90s.
*For example, Mewtwo in Chinese is Chaomeng 超夢 which means Super Mew. Mew is called Meng 夢. (The “Meng” character literally means “dream,” and it was meant to approximate the Japanese pronunciation of Myū/Mew.) Hmmm. In addition to trainers, scientists, breeders, and photographers, are there also etymologists in the Pokémon world?
I think they were - those four names are pronounced like in English, except for a Rammstein rrr in Raichu and usually an emphasis on PikAchu instead of PIkachu
Here are a few more that are about the infamous Porygon episode. The second video is an official response to the incident and an announcement about resuming the animated series after temporarily taking it off the air.
Shouldn’t that be enough already for PSA to finally grade more than German Base Set? 
One employee pronounced the German names like they were English words, meanwhile the reporter called an Entei (Entei in German as well) plush “Enton”, which is Psyduck in German. Many legendary Pokemon share their names in both languages, but most have some native pun in the same way the English do. A few examples like Nidoking&queen are clearly derived from the English names, since they’re not “Nidokönig/königin”. “Mewzwei” doesn’t really roll off the tongue either 
