As someone who entered the hobby this year, I completely missed the rainbow stage of Pokemon cards. I’ve opened some boxes recently with my daughter and she pulled two rainbow cards (Blastoise & Piplup, as well as Giratina.) For someone seeing them for the first time they are stunning with incredible texture, however, I don’t often hear people talk about them. Was there over saturation at the time and people moved past the ‘gimmick’ or am I in the minority thinking they are gorgeous cards?
I’ve only seen Japanese cards in hand so not sure if the English lacked texture or not, as an aside.
I personally think that era will be looked back upon really fondly for some incredible cards, but that’s coming from someone that wasn’t around during that era so about as non informed as possible. Interested to hear the thoughts of others that were collecting during the period.
They were originally very cool. Pikachu VMAX from Vivid Voltage was about the tipping point, though. Once alt arts came out, people cared much less about rainbow rares and some began to vocally dislike them. The consensus in 2024 is that most people dislike rainbow rares, and this is reflected in their relatively cheap prices.
they’re a novelty that i think grew old and tiring, especially once special arts were reintroduced. personally, i think the biggest issue with them is that they’re 100% rainbow. i think it would have been better if only part of the card was rainbow… like how the gold cards are now where just the background is gold.
When all the secret rares were just rainbow versions of the full arts, it got old REAL Fast. For me personally, I was not a fan of most full arts at the point, and the rainbow versions were like adding insult to injury. Some were nice, but the alternate arts always outdid the rainbow for me. For collectors, seeing the new set with a bunch of rainbow-filled cards EVERY time was just overload.
We also had the Amazing Rares, which were kinda the same, except only the background, and in my experience, those were better received. But they only lasted for a few sets.
I don’t know about collectibility, but I always found the text hard to read. I mean, I can imagine if they were used in competitions, unless you know what the card does, it would be a nightmare to read the text on those cards.
I do feel however that as time passes they will be looked fondly by collectors, especially if they don’t make a comeback. I think it will have the same position in the hobby as BREAK cards do.
Personally? They’re unredeemable. Some of the worst illustrations to ever come out of TPC on some of the worst card layouts with unicorn vomit. They look like TPC heard the “I like cards with rainbows in them” and then made the exact opposite of that. For 2 whole generations.
I think they will be largely remembered as a post-golden era, disliked rarity that refused to die.
Overall I was never a huge fan, as especially in the SWSH era I feel like you couldn’t even tell one rainbow rare apart from another unless you had it directly in front of your face! That said, I do feel like the rainbow effect was more graceful in SM and some of those cards actually look nice (it helps that with tag teams the art was also less boring). This card in particular comes to mind as a favorite:
Problem with rainbow rares is if you have a 3x3 binder full of them and stand 2 feet away, you can’t tell which card is which. They all blend in together.
I really liked them in early sun and moon as they were a fun novelty to see added into sets, but to echo what has been said above they got outshined by special arts pretty quickly so by swsh they weren’t exciting anymore.
Something I haven’t seen mentioned yet, that was personally was my biggest problem with them by the end of swsh, was the bloating they added to sets. Starting in swsh supporter cards and vmax cards could be rainbow as well. This along with normal full arts already having rainbow variants really bloated up sets from now having a handful for all the pokemon to 1-2 dozen a set. Then with the introduction of Alt Arts that meant some pokemon could have 4 cards for them(flat v, full art, rainbow, and alt art). Rainbow was no longer a fun chase card, that was arguably better than a normal full art in some instances, but a middle of the road variant that was outshined by alt arts and bloated up a set to unreasonable numbers.
I’m glad they stopped with them at the start of SV. I’ll always look back on the SM variants fondly, but I think them leaving once they overstayed their welcome was the right choice.
Most people hate them at this point because it was a gimmick that got tired really quickly.
Though I knew someone a while back that was buying a lot of them because he thought that one day people will look back fondly on them and that they would be thought of similar to the “ghost rares” in yugioh. I can see that as a possibility. In contrast, something like a BREAK card was never popular and probably never will be lol
Even as a new collector when they were around it took about 1 pull to start getting disappointed about getting the rainbow instead of the regular. They were just ugly.
The SM era rainbow rares in Japanese have grown on me. The texture on them is very well done and I think they’re much better than the bland and boring full arts which plagued the era. However, it really is a “big fish in a small pond” kind of thing. Compared to special arts and art rares and all the new stuff Pokemon has done since SM, rainbow rares are the least desirable and most creatively bankrupt. English Rainbows are way worse than Japanese, the texture unremarkable and does not pop. I’d agree that the English ones are irredeemable outside of the excitement of a rare chase.
I appreciate them for what they are, but running them for two straight generations really burned out the collector base.
Never liked them, even when they were a fresh thing and not saturated like they are now.
As others said, they all look the same. I always preferred the regular full art for proper colours.
That said, the Sun/Moon era GX full arts have extremely bland 5ban art and the texture patterns aren’t interesting either. Compared to XY and B&W where each card had an interesting texture effect and the art by Ryo Ueda (not for all full arts but a lot of them) was a little bit better.
I’m a fan of them individually, but as others have said, if you get a binder page of them together, they all blend in to each other.
At Worlds 2019, I thought they’d make a good background for Ishihara’s autograph since they were plainly colored and illustrated by nobody in particular, and it was an okay decision. I’d probably rethink it today, but they’re still cool.
They were cool in SM, but carrying them over into SwSh eventually burned me out. They didnt feel special anymore and started to feel like filler in the set, bloating the card count even further. It just become another “pull” you didnt want in place of what you actually were looking for. Also agree that if you put a lot of them together, you cant tell them apart, it just looks like rainbow sparkly nothingness.
I think rainbow rares of popular pokemon like Charizard, Pikachu, mew, etc. Will probably grow a bit more desirable over time, but the vast majority wont imo. Theyre just bland, especially if you were trying to make a full rainbow binder, so i think people will more likely just go for a handful of them with pokemon they like
Second this. General reception towards Rainbow Rares turn negative quickly in SWSH due to many factors:
It’s already been the second era of having Rainbow Rares, so it naturally grew old.
Rainbow Rare Supporters were added. Original Full Art Supporters are hand drawn and with fully-detailed backgrounds, while Rainbow Rares have their backgrounds removed. This makes the Rainbow Rare copies even less appealing to collectors who appreciate the artworks.
The rainbow colors in SWSH are more vivid and with more glittering, which could make people feel “too much” visually.
The introduction of Alt Art VMAXes which have much more demand among collectors, making Rainbow Rares more like a miss than a hit.
From what I heard during SWSH was 1 HR in 6 boxes and 1 UR in 12.
Thanks for that, any idea about SM?
I agree with all the points above, that being said some of the generic art repaints do look cool. The HRs, URs also would make a fantastic, cheap canvas for an art project
