Pokémon: Pixels, Cardboard, and a Thirty‑Year Obsession

Three decades of games, cardboard, content, and culture from the world’s biggest media franchise—still as hyped as ever.

Pokémon is celebrating its 30th anniversary, and as of this week, it’s safe to say Poké‑mania is about as high as it’s ever been. With roughly 150 billion dollars in lifetime revenue, the Japanese‑born global phenomenon now ranks as the highest‑grossing media franchise of all time, richer than any single thing Disney—or anyone else—has ever created. Across its video games, which first debuted in 1996 for the Game Boy with Pokémon Red and Pokémon Green in Japan and then in 1998 worldwide as Pokémon Red and Pokémon Blue, plus its movies, an anime that’s crossed the 1,300‑episode mark, mountains of merchandise, and, of course, its trading cards, there’s truly been nothing like it.

Now, as a millennial who was first introduced to the series with Pokémon Red in 1998, I am no doubt part of the franchise’s key demographic—and yes, I mean am, not was. Surveys for the 30th anniversary show that Millennials and Gen Z are still driving much of Pokémon’s love and engagement, with around 57% of Millennials in one recent UK poll saying they’ve engaged with the franchise in some way, and 30% of Millennials saying they outright love or like Pokémon. Many Millennials and Gen Z are now parents too—not me—and they’re sharing that Poké‑fever with their children, revisiting old collections and passing the hobby down, so you can expect the franchise’s fervor to keep growing across parents, kids, and even grandparents.

I gladly put down 20 dollars each for the new Nintendo Switch re‑releases of Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen, recently finished the main storyline of Pokémon Legends: Z‑A—which has already sold millions of copies—and, since the end of September, have played the official Pokémon Trading Card Game in person every week, plus its free‑to‑play digital counterpart, Pokémon Trading Card Game Live, pretty much every day on my Mac, PC, or phone.

As a writer and now officially trained journalist with a Master’s in Journalism (thanks, CUNY Newmark!), I’m keenly interested in the franchise for more than just personal nostalgia. The business is fascinating: Pokémon video games are closing in on half a billion units sold, and the trading card game has produced more than 75 billion cards worldwide, with over 10 billion printed in the most recent fiscal year alone. Merchandise and licensing help push the broader collecting economy into the ten‑plus‑billion‑dollar‑a‑year range. Then there’s the cultural imprint: everyone knows who Pikachu is, and Logan Paul’s PSA 10 Pikachu Illustrator just sold for 16.49 million dollars, setting a new record for the most expensive trading card ever and turning a single piece of cardboard into headline news. It’s not just Pikachu either: auction records for other first‑generation mascots like Charizard, Gengar, Psyduck, and Eevee regularly reach six figures, with the biggest trophies pushing into seven‑figure territory as the market for high‑end Pokémon cardboard keeps heating up.

Perhaps what fascinates me most is how intentional the whole machine is. Pokémon has spent three decades perfecting a kind of cross‑platform, cross‑generational marketing loop—video games feed the anime, which feeds the cards and merch, which feed the next round of games—while speaking differently to kids, nostalgic adults, and investors at the same time. Its cultural footprint has been big enough to draw moral panics and religious backlash, from school bans and church card‑burnings in the West to a Saudi fatwa that once declared the franchise un‑Islamic, even as other religious authorities rushed to defend it.

Then, at another, more immediate level, there’s also the psychology of being a Pokémon TCG collector—even in spite of the scalpers and the gigantic market spikes in sealed TCG product pricing—and of being a player at a weekly game, a regular regional competitor, or someone opting for the bite‑sized mobile version, Pokémon TCG Pocket—a newer installment that, in just its first year, has been estimated to generate around 1.3 billion dollars in revenue, making it the most lucrative first‑year launch of any Pokémon mobile game, even outpacing Pokémon Go’s debut.

That said, you can expect more Pokémon writing and content going forward—but not only Pokémon. There’s more to come on music, gaming, sports, wider arts, entertainment, culture, and the business that runs through all of it.

And just because it’s still a banger: