Target’s new retro-inspired Pokémon collection was made for superfans, by superfans

When Pokémon launched in 1996, the brand offered just a pair of video games, a single region within its world for players to explore, and 151 creatures for them to capture and train. 30 years later, Pokémon mania is stronger than ever.

The most recent mainline games in the series, Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, sold 10 million copies in their first three days, while the accompanying Pokémon Trading Card Game printed 10.2 million new cards between 2024 and 2025. The franchise now features 1,025 Pokémon across its more than a hundred video game titles under the Pokémon umbrella, including the mobile gaming phenomenon Pokémon Go, which ranks among the highest-grossing mobile games. Pokémon has even gotten the Hollywood blockbuster treatment, thanks to 2019’s Detective Pikachu.

But the pull of its earliest iteration remains an appealing and accessible way into the franchise for nostalgic and new fans alike. That’s why it served as the inspiration for an officially licensed limited-time collection from Target. The collection, unveiled Wednesday, is the only U.S. retailer collaboration with Pokémon for the brand’s 30th anniversary, and launches initially in May.

The collection could help bring fans into stores as the retailer looks to improve its sales, which were down 1.7% year-over-year in 2025 on a net basis and 2.6% on a comparable-store basis.

The Pokémon x Target collection features more than 100 unique pieces of merchandise, from apparel and home goods to tech accessories and bags. From the collection’s conception, Target has been centering the franchise’s diehard fans—from its own vice president of marketing to superstar singer Joe Jonas, who’s the face of the collection.

A time machine to the ‘90s

Even with more than 100 items, Target’s Pokémon collection barely scratches the surface of the franchise’s universe. Distilling 30 years into one collection was the challenge faced by Gigi Guerra, Target’s vice president of marketing, who brought her perspective as a diehard fan to the process.

To pare down the Pokédex, Target chose to lean into the occasion for the collection and looked to where it all began, basing all of its new products on Pokémon from the original Pokémon Red and Blue.

“If you took a time machine back to 1996, what would be there?” Guerra says she and her team asked themselves. “And it was the Kanto region. It was the original 151.”

The products and their accompanying campaign lean into the era’s aesthetic, too. The red, blue, and yellow color scheme that defined the first Pokémon generation is all over the collection, along with holographic packaging details reminiscent of holofoil Pokémon cards.

That ‘90s nostalgia extends to the other brands Target got involved in the collaboration, many of which immediately evoke the aesthetics of the era. There’s a Trapper Keeper designed to hold Pokémon cards, a Caboodle tailor-made for other Pokémon merchandise, and a Starter jacket representing the Kanto region. “That’s going to be an instant collector’s item,” Guerra says of the jacket, noting easter eggs like Pokémon symbols on the inside of the pocket.

Pokémon x Target will release in two drops, with the first in-store on May 2 and online on May 3. The rest of the collection will release in June. Guerra says she hopes the collection connects with Pokémon fans, no matter how or when they got into the franchise.

“Pokémon connects people from all over,” Guerra says. “No matter where you started Pokémon or how old you are, everyone knows and loves that first-gen nostalgia.”

And though the collection can appeal to new fans, it’s especially made to satisfy longtime fandom fanatics—and was made with their input.

For fans, by fans

On paper, Target and Pokémon make the perfect collaborators. Target says that 1 in 18 of its shoppers buy Pokémon in some capacity. But marketing a collection to a specific fandom, even one as massive as Pokémon, is a tightrope walk: If a brand’s investment in the community feels surface-level, it can quickly be written off as pandering and decried by the very audience it’s trying to reach.

“The problem with that is fandom, by its very nature, isn’t just a number,” creator economy analyst and anime expert Ben Woods says. “It has its own nuances. It has its own in-jokes. It has its own key figureheads and celebrated characters.”

From the outset of this effort, Target worked to avoid this pitfall by letting genuine Pokémon fans steer the collection. It didn’t have to look far to find them.

Guerra herself is the biggest fan in her family, even though she got into the world by picking up Pokémon Go to connect with her kids. She even attends annual Pokémon conventions in cosplay, including dressing as her favorite Pokémon, fairy-type Eeveelution Sylveon.

The rest of the team, around 20 Target employees who offered input, came together like a game of telephone at HQ. “Everyone knew of someone that was a Pokémon fan,” Guerra says. “It was almost like we had this internal sounding board and filter for everything in how we’re picking products, picking colors, picking Pokémon.”

That insider perspective led to countless “if you know, you know” details throughout the collection, she says, from blind-box water bottles featuring beloved water-type Pokémon to puzzles with 151 pieces.

That fandom is also reflected in how Guerra is marketing the collection. Poster boy Joe Jonas is a lifelong fan of the franchise known for his unboxing livestreams of Pokémon cards (he has a tattoo of mythical Pokémon Mew, No. 150 of the original 151). “He’s been a fan since he was a kid, so for him, it was like a real full-circle moment,” Guerra says, teasing forthcoming Pokemon content from the pop star.

The collection’s campaign also features superfans, with Pokémon influencers including Sydeon, PhillyBeatzU and Stephosaurawr and Aspen modeling products like Butterfree-shaped hair clips, Magikarp tank tops, and kickballs patterned like Pokéballs.

“To be able to do a Pokémon collaboration—I’ve worked at Target for more than a decade,” Guerra says. “I’ve been waiting for this day for years.”