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Is Pokémon less popular than it used to be?

I remember when I was a kid (around ages 4-9), I noticed a lot of Pokemon merch sold literally everywhere: There was Pokemon cereal, tins of Pokemon spaghetti, boxes of Pokemon macaroni, Pokemon plush toys, Pokemon hairclips, Pokemon figures, Pokemon clothing, Pokemon TCG cards, Pokemon toys and other items in fast food restaurants like Burger King, and I remember there being some holographic Pokemon coins with those "Quavers" crips. I also remember there being Pokemon dog tags, Pokemon flipz, Pokemon magnets, those "pre-packaged" bakery boxes for making Pokemon cupcakes and cookies, cartons of fruit juice with Gengar pictures on them (for the blackcurrent flavours at least, can't remember if there were other flavours or not), etc.

This was all in the UK by the by, mostly back in the late 90s and early to mid 2000s.
Pokemon themed items seemed to slowly start declining after the 2nd gen, and by the 4th gen, I never really saw anything in stores any more aside from Pokemon toys. Pokemon merch seemed to have increased a bit since the 6th gen around here, GAME stores always seem to have a small shelf dedicated to Pokemon merch; shirts, toys, plushies, cards, etc. I even saw some Pikachu socks in Primark just a week ago, that was unexpected.

I think Pokemon has always had a mostly consistent popularity, but it's definitely had its peaks and more "quiet" moments. I rarely come across people of my age group (early 20s) that haven't played Pokemon at some point in their lives, and Pokemon fans ain't hard to come by. There's one guy in one of my classes who often wears Pokemon shirts, and got the whole room talking about Pokemon GO a few months back before class started.
Speaking of GO, it definitely seems to have made a spike in Pokemon popularity recently. I've even gotten tired of seeing and hearing about it myself, since it's literally everywhere at the moment, even BBC news had a snippet on its TV station a day or two ago.
 
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If I recall correctly - and I may not, considering how young I was when the original games were released - the PokéMania around Pokémon GO is much, much stronger than it was for the original games.

The fact that everyone knows what a Pikachu is says it all, though, and I feel Pokémon well and truly peaked as a culturally defining franchise in 2000 and again now, the franchise may not be what it once was, but hey, these forums are filled with thousands of posts every single day and the main series games always sell in massive numbers. If Pokémon for some obscene reason wasn't around to stay before, it certainly is now.

And, so it goes without saying, it will be very, very interesting to see how many units Sun and Moon sell in comparison to previous generation opening pairs. Will GO have a long-lasting effect?
 

BCVM22

Well-Known Member
If I recall correctly - and I may not, considering how young I was when the original games were released - the PokéMania around Pokémon GO is much, much stronger than it was for the original games.

They're not quite of the same vintage. The whirlwind surrounding the sudden invasion of a franchise consisting at the time of two video games, a television show and metric tons of assorted merchandise was considerably more vigorous than the one surrounding a single mobile game.
 
They're not quite of the same vintage. The whirlwind surrounding the sudden invasion of a franchise consisting at the time of two video games, a television show and metric tons of assorted merchandise was considerably more vigorous than the one surrounding a single mobile game.

Oh, yes, I agree on that front. I phrased it wrong, sorry; what I meant was that though the franchise as a whole may not be as popular as it was back then, it is on the lips of more mouths than ever before, in my opinion - but as is the nature of the modern age of smartphone applications.
 

Utopianopal

Time Crashes
I think not...They're holding up pretty well with news and keeping the community satisfied. With the release of Pokemon GO everyone has been going crazy and new Pokemon for Sun&Moon are still being announced so the rates of popularity are pretty much going up since Poke Go and Sun&Moon are everywhere at the moment. Just wait until Sun&Moon actually releases.
 
Game-wise it's still very popular and it just got even MORE popular with Pokemon Go releasing. Pokemon Go boosted it way up.

But the anime the 1997 anime is/was more popular than the ones now imo.
 

greninjamaster

Well-Known Member
Game-wise it's still very popular and it just got even MORE popular with Pokemon Go releasing. Pokemon Go boosted it way up.

But the anime the 1997 anime is/was more popular than the ones now imo.

Oh for sure that's why when there's talks of making a movie they never ever bring up Serena and the crew because they know they won't sell. Not the way Ash, Misty, Brock, and TR will because that's nostalgia to the extreme.

If they make a Pokemon Live Action movie the chances of it being about Ash, Misty, Brock, Pikachu, and TR are overwhelmingly higher then of the crew he has today.
 

Ioneos

old geezer
Personally I don't think GO is really increasing the popularity of the series in the long-term; only the short term. The prices of second hand Pokémon games has recently gone way up as people have rediscovered/remembered their passion for Pokémon back in the late 90's/early 00's or whenever. Everyone else is just playing it because it's a good and popular game, not because it's a Pokemon game. In other words: the game is good and popular because it's based on Pokémon, and people play it because it's good and popular. The transitive reasoning means that this is a short term popularity spike imo (of course, this reasoning has literally zero scientific or logical basis, it's just an opinion/theory).

Still, the scale of popularity for Pokémon is kind of screwed up. If you look at the most popular games on any handheld Nintendo console, each Pokémon game released on it is always up at the top. Generally the only games that outsell Pokémon are launch titles. Iirc XY has sold 15M+ copies. That's fifteen million games on a relatively unpopular handheld console which plenty of consumers skipped after buying the ever so popular DS. While I think it's clear that Pokémon is declining in popularity (or at least, has declined in the past tense), I don't think it's on its way out anytime soon.

((hey, just got updated to dynamo trainer :D))
 

PrinceOfFacade

Ghost-Type Master
It's funny cuz even my parents were talking about Pokemon Go today hee hee, and they usually don't even know what new Pokemon games are out. But as you said, it's likely a fad so I don't think the franchise has repeaked in terms of popularity, at least not permanently. ^^;

But Pokémon GO has already ignited interest in the franchise.

The only reason the game was released this year - excluding it being the 20th anniversary - was to raise enough hype to bring attention towards Sun and Moon, and it worked. Many Pokémon GO players who aren't long term fans have cited interest in playing Pokémon Sun and Moon. Once Sun and Moon is released, those who are currently playing GO will transition to the main game.

Personally, I predict 3 million sales the first week in the U.S. alone.
 

Volvic93

New Member
Pokemon GO has brought a lot of people back to the franchise, I reckon there will be a spike in the amount of people that buy the upcoming games.
 

Xenon Blue

No Hard Feelings
Pokemon GO saved Pokemon and Nintendo's ***. Should have invested in the mobile industry from the start, eh?
 

Nockturne

Well-Known Member
Pokemon GO saved Pokemon and Nintendo's ***. Should have invested in the mobile industry from the start, eh?

Well its not like Pokemon was totally irrelevant before Pokemon Go.

I mean sure, Go helped Pokemon get the kind of media attention it used to enjoy in the late 90's (in fact one of my favorite things about Go is its given people who weren't around for Gen 1 a sense of what Gen 1 was like and how ubiquitous Pokemon was at the time, which I think helps people understand why Gen 1 get such a disproportionate amount of love) but Pokemon wasn't exactly on its last legs and looking at falling to the abyss before that.
 

Auraninja

Eh, ragazzo!
Pokemon GO saved Pokemon and Nintendo's ***. Should have invested in the mobile industry from the start, eh?
Pokemon is the second highest selling franchise, so I don't know how they were trailing behind. Nintendo's Wii U has not sold tremendously well, but how many Pokemon games were really on it? Pokemon Rumble U was on it, but let's not kid ourselves.

The mobile industry is only going to go so far, as Nintendo is still a dedicated hardware manufacturer. What the mobile market could potentially do, that we've seen with Pokemon Go, is raise publicity for their company.
 

Xenon Blue

No Hard Feelings
Ok maybe it didn't save Pokemon, but it definitely helped it gain popularity again. Pokemon GO is probably not a long-term solution to start with, but it was a badly needed promotion to get people back into pokemon.
 

Nockturne

Well-Known Member
It wasn't badly needed at all, its a nice boost sure but Pokemon would still be a massive success without it. There are enough current and new fans into Pokemon for it to not really need the old fans to get back into it to make it a success.

I mean we don't even know for sure if its going to have a significant impact on Sun/Moon sales. Pokemon Go's initial media hype is already waning (even turning looking at the bad press surrounding Niantic's lack of communication and sketchy approach to fixing glitches) and by November it certainly won't be in the news/trending on social media anywhere near as much as it has been.
 

Samayouru

Rabid Dusclops Fan
It wasn't badly needed at all, its a nice boost sure but Pokemon would still be a massive success without it. There are enough current and new fans into Pokemon for it to not really need the old fans to get back into it to make it a success.

I mean we don't even know for sure if its going to have a significant impact on Sun/Moon sales. Pokemon Go's initial media hype is already waning (even turning looking at the bad press surrounding Niantic's lack of communication and sketchy approach to fixing glitches) and by November it certainly won't be in the news/trending on social media anywhere near as much as it has been.

I agree with this. Prices for the old Nintendo GBA SP consoles skyrocketed when Go came out, I've noticed a slight decrease in prices on the internet though so I thik the hype is starting to die down.
 
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