{"id":857907,"date":"2026-08-17T01:34:11","date_gmt":"2026-08-17T01:34:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/857907\/"},"modified":"2026-08-17T01:34:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-17T01:34:11","slug":"the-kids-were-right-30-years-of-pokemon-from-school-wide-bans-to-multimillion-dollar-trading-cards-pokemon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/857907\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018The kids were right\u2019: 30 years of Pok\u00e9mon, from school-wide bans to multimillion-dollar trading cards | Pok\u00e9mon"},"content":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s a generation of Australians for whom Cheez TV was a religion. Every morning before school, I\u2019d sit in my little white plastic chair about three feet from our big wooden television and watch 90 minutes of cartoons \u201ccurated\u201d<\/a> by the show\u2019s teenage hosts, Jade and Ryan.<\/p>\n

Premiering in 1995, Cheez TV dominated the children\u2019s breakfast market by 1998, stealing the crown from Channel Seven\u2019s bogan-muppet icon Agro<\/a>. A daily dose of Cheez TV was such an important ritual to me<\/a> that I remember feeling active resentment towards Princess Diana\u2019s death because the news coverage bumped Earthworm Jim.<\/p>\n

Cheez TV: \u2018I remember sitting there, tinned spaghetti-soaked toastie in hand, gripped by a feeling of meteoric magic and wonder.\u2019 Photograph: YouTube<\/p>\n

But in September of 1998 my world was rocked when Jade and Ryan introduced something unlike anything I had ever seen \u2013 a Japanese cartoon called Pok\u00e9mon. I remember sitting there, tinned spaghetti-soaked toastie in hand, gripped by a feeling of meteoric magic and wonder as the opening bars of the theme song rolled over me: \u201cI want to be the very best \/ like no one ever was.\u201d<\/a> Yes, I thought, yes! I want that more than anything!<\/p>\n

But it wouldn\u2019t be long before Pok\u00e9mania became a moral panic in the Australian media \u2013 not so much a kids\u2019 cartoon as a national security threat.<\/p>\n

Tsunekazu Ishihara, the chief executive of the Pok\u00e9mon Company, at the 2025 Gold Gala. Photograph: JC Olivera\/Variety\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, Pok\u00e9mon was created by zinester turned game designer Satoshi Tajiri<\/a>, developed by his company Game Freak and released in Japan by Nintendo as a sort of swan song for the ageing Game Boy. In Japan, it rapidly transformed from a schoolyard phenomenon to a national one, but it would take two years before it arrived in the west and became as omnipresent as Zubats in a dark cave.<\/a><\/p>\n

It crash-landed in Australia via Cheez TV and, within a month of its debut, my life (and an entire generation of lives) revolved around the singular quest to \u201ccatch \u2019em all\u201d.<\/p>\n

When the Game Boy games hit Australian shelves, they were an instant sensation too, jointly selling more than 400m worldwide.<\/p>\n

For the uninitiated, these games asked the player to explore a region called Kanto to collect, research and battle an enormous variety of creatures known as Pok\u00e9mon<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Game Boy Pok\u00e9mon games sold more than 400m worldwide. Photograph: Alamy<\/p>\n

I became so immersed in the world they presented \u2013 mythical animals and explorable forests and caves \u2013 that I felt my sense of what was possible, from my imagination to life itself, actively shift and expand. Pok\u00e9mon was beautiful.<\/p>\n

So of course, my school, the media and Australia at large responded to it like it was a plague devouring the hearts, souls and minds of the nation\u2019s youth.<\/p>\n

\u2018Turning our children to witchcraft and violence\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cThe most popular toy this Christmas could be turning our children to witchcraft and violence,\u201d began a Channel Seven news feature on Pok\u00e9mon in 1999<\/a>, citing the concerns of Sunshine Coast pastor Chas Gullo<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s short for \u2018Pocket Monster,\u2019\u201d<\/a> opined another Seven news anchor, \u201cand when you discover the cost, it\u2019s not a bad description.\u201d<\/p>\n

On ABC radio, Mark Colvin warned: \u201cThe slogan is \u2018gotta catch \u2019em all\u2019, but many parents would be wondering whether that refers to the characters or the company\u2019s aims for every primary school child in Australia\u201d.<\/a> He handed over to a reporter who called it \u201ca worldwide craze over a collection of odd-looking creatures. One hundred and fifty-one, to be precise. With names like Pikachu, Meowth and Giber\u201d.<\/p>\n

Pikachu mascots. Photograph: Yasuyoshi Chiba\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

(There is no Pok\u00e9mon that goes by the name \u201cGiber\u201d.)<\/p>\n

The release of the Pok\u00e9mon Trading Card Game midway through 1999 turned recess and lunch into something resembling the two-up game from Wake in Fright. The trading card game was and is a beast unto itself \u2013 a loose adaptation of the video game\u2019s mechanics that also revolves around battling, trading and collecting them all \u2013 and Australians spent $11m on the trading cards in the first two months of their release<\/a>. They invited lunchbreak drama, which led to school-wide bans.<\/p>\n

\u2018The release of the Pok\u00e9mon Trading Card Game \u2026 turned recess and lunch into something resembling two-up from Wake in Fright.\u2019 Photograph: Mael Ghazi\/Hans Lucas\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

These bans were met at some schools with protests. At my own, we led a sit-in at the special school assembly to debate the matter, with appointed representatives tasked with explaining the concept of Gengar to our beleaguered principal.<\/p>\n

In this early wave of media hysteria, which was not contained to Australia, Pok\u00e9mon was seen as something between a vice, an addiction<\/a> and, according to Peta, a past-time that could lead to animal abuse and dogfighting<\/a>. There were reports of robberies, fraud and counterfeit, and old wives\u2019 tales of kids jumping off buildings<\/a> because they thought they\u2019d evolved into Pidgeotto.<\/p>\n

Undercutting a lot of these Australian news stories of a \u201cdangerous craze\u201d,<\/a> however, was the footage that accompanied it: of children playing amicably in large groups, smiling at the camera and excitedly explaining to puzzled journos why Alakazam can easily defeat Machamp, despite the latter\u2019s muscles.<\/p>\n

Lost in the reactionary response was a misunderstanding of its genius: to catch \u2019em all, you had to interact, befriend and trust your fellow players. Pok\u00e9mon not only encouraged community, it required it.<\/p>\n

\u2018Pok\u00e9mon not only encouraged community, it required it.\u2019 Photograph: Martin Lelievre\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Pok\u00e9mon was also my first taste of places and people beyond my own sphere. I remember one of my cousins coming back from Japan with a boxful of Japanese Pok\u00e9mon cards; a Canadian exchange student swapping US-exclusive toys for rare Yowies; sharing the language of Pok\u00e9mon with Sri Lankan kids, none of whom spoke English.<\/p>\n

Young fans knew that Pok\u00e9mania was not an affliction but a shared, communal experience that linked you to people all over the globe. Millions of kids around the world knew what a Cubone was and, for me, that made my life in Perth feel a little less isolated.<\/p>\n

Today Pok\u00e9mon remains bound up in the national zeitgeist while still attracting controversy: there\u2019s currently a wave of hobby-shop burglaries around the country,<\/a> sparked by the insane inflation of the value of Pok\u00e9mon trading cards, which have almost become their own currency \u2013 the most valuable of these auction for $16.5m.<\/a><\/p>\n

But despite the earnest wishes of my teachers, parents and the Australian media, Pok\u00e9mon\u2019s staying power has proved that the kids were right all along. It is now the single largest media franchise in the world, with countless games, media, toys, a new theme park and even crockery.<\/a> Pok\u00e9mon remains at the top of the food chain because of its emphasis on simple joys; it will always be a franchise that unites people<\/a> because it continues to ask one simple question: do you want to have some fun?<\/p>\n