An acquaintance I made recently was an early League coordinator who had a bunch of surviving missives and communications from WotC. They are all from around 2000. I thought some of the mentions in them were fun to read and I wanted to share them.
Random Tidbits
- Initial League supply kits contained enough material for 50 participants. There is actually a full breakdown of the complete kit contents.
- Most activities were age restricted, but not all. They definitely did not want adults steamrolling challenges in the League to get promo cards.
Pichu Black Star Promo Distribution
- “The Pichu Promo card will be very popular because it is one of the first, all-new, reverse-holo promo cards ever produced for the Pokémon TCG. (Reverse-holo cards are holographic everywhere but the picture.)”
- Distribution was dependent on the completion of a word search activity between two players.
- “Please do not request additional promo cards.”
Happy Birthday, Pikachu Promo Distribution
- Distribution was dependent on completion of a “Create A Card” activity and then received by mail order. One of the fields on the submission form was social security number, which is hysterical. “Some people may feel uncomfortable providing their social security numbers on their activities. Please let these people know that they don’t have to include their social security numbers to receive their cards.”
- The “Create A Card” activity was restricted to only the first 50 trainers to complete a previous challenge.
- Either a huge number of Birthday Pikachus arrived to their recipients damaged or people were trying to get duplicates from Wizards, because they got so many calls for replacements they had to stop accepting the complaints. “Due to the overwhelming number of calls we received about getting a replacement Happy Birthday, Pikachu promo card, we will no longer be fulfilling requests in this manner.”
- Each League was sent a “small amount” of Birthday Pikachus that were meant to be used to replace damaged cards in-store.
Igglybuff/Scizor Promo Debacle
- Black Star Promo Scizor was shipped to Leagues with Igglybuff progress tickers. To address this, Leagues were told to stash their Scizor promos until next season and warned they would not receive more. Igglybuff was shipped to stores early and given out first to accommodate for the mistake. Shocking that this scandal was buried for 20 years and is only now coming to light.
- Wizards took this time to remind staff that promotional cards are not for resale.
Some thoughts from me: These notices and updates try really hard to get people to acknowledge the rules and follow the League guidelines. They wanted promos to be won or earned by completing specific activities and participating in League and didn’t just want them to be given out. That said, some were given out more freely than others. Pichu only required kids to create and complete a word search.
I think we all know that most Leagues were, in practice, much more forgiving with their promo distribution than these bulletins suggest. If you were a kid at a League and wanted a promo you got one - at least on a first-come first-serve basis.
There aren’t that many pages, but I will scan them in full next time I’m in the office. For now I’ll attach some pics in a minute.
Also pretty cool is that I obtained a pretty huge pile of the official activity sheets. There are a lot of duplicates but also a lot of variety here.
