Pokémon turns 30: What’s behind the media franchise’s enduring appeal?

Benson Lu’s life revolves around Pokémon.

The 26-year-old has played the mobile game Pokémon Go every day for a decade, watches the animated show every week, goes to the local card shop in his Los Angeles suburb to play the brand’s trading card game every week, and has a whopping collection of cards worth more than $70,000.

“I don’t remember when was the last day I did not think about Pokémon at all,” he said.

In the 30 years since Pokémon debuted in Japan with the 1996 release of Pokémon Red and Pokémon Green for Nintendo Game Boy, the franchise has taken over the globe with its animated shows, mobile games and highly coveted trading cards. Its popularity continues with fans young and old.

Pokémon offers a masterclass in character design, which has helped make it so enduring, said Heather Cole, teaching assistant professor of game design and interactive media at West Virginia University.

“I think the longevity of it has to do with the characters and world-building it does with the characters,” she said.

A valuable commodity

It’s not just cuteness that has people clamoring for merchandise, particularly trading cards. Today, some are so coveted that social media star Logan Paul sold one for a record $16.5 million. In Southern California, the fervor around Pokémon cards has led to strings of break-ins in recent months at trading card stores that have amounted to hundreds of thousands of dollars of losses and even some collectors robbed at gunpoint.

Adam Corn, owner of card business Overdose Gaming Inc, said he was able to buy a house last year from his Pokémon cards.

“Pokémon almost always appreciates in value over time,” Corn said. “So it’s just a really good place to put your money in my opinion, better than a a lot of other assets.”

Companies like Beckett Grading Services and Professional Sports Authenticator authenticate and grade the quality of Pokémon cards on a scale of 1-10, with 10 being pristine mint condition and fetching the highest prices. Paul bought the PSA Grade 10 Pikachu Illustrator card a few months prior for $5.3 million and wore the card on a chain around his neck in videos. It features a Pikachu holding a pen and feather sweeper.

Last Tuesday, thieves stole more than $80,000 of Pokémon cards from Do-We Collectibles in Anaheim—the second time the store has been targeted. Other stores around Los Angeles and in New York have been hit by Pokémon thieves too.

Duy Pham, owner of the Anaheim store, said the financial incentive of trading cards for robbers and scalpers means “the hobby will never be the same.”

“It’s rougher for collectors and players,” Pham said. “It’s hard for us to get anything.”

Collectors can either pay retail price for a standard pack of randomized Pokémon cards, around $5 for 10 cards, or buy the specific card they want secondhand for higher prices. But much like gambling, opening packs doesn’t always pan out to profit—Aiden Zeng spent $1,000 on packs of cards that were only valued at $60 on the resale market, he said.

Zeng, 17, said his fandom began in elementary school, when he obsessed over character guidebooks. He eventually began trying to collect every single type of card available for his favorite, Black Kyurem.

“I memorized every single Pokémon’s specific move set, what region they come from, some of the lore behind it,” Zeng said.

Resurgence of popularity

Even beyond dedicated collectors, Zeng said he has seen a resurgence of popularity for Pokémon at his high school in Toronto, where some students decorate their phone cases with cards featuring special artwork or a holographic sheen.

Pokémon creator Satoshi Tajiri has said he enjoyed catching insects and other small critters in the fields and forests outside the Tokyo suburb where he lived as a child. Those creatures inspired him to make the colorful, fantastical Pokémon of which there are thousands of species today.

While his hobby is lucrative, Lu said the draw for him is still nostalgia for the characters he grew up with and the community he has formed around Pokémon. He prefers not to sell his single cards because he worries he will never be able to find them again.

Lu recently spent an entire Saturday walking around the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California, looking for Pokémon on his augmented reality phone game at an event attended by thousands.

“I’ve liked Pokémon ever since I was a kid,” he said. “And I still like it the same amount.”

—Jaimie Ding and Liam Mcewan, Associated Press