Boston Globe today...just ask yourself how you think the DVUI Pokemon Animotion merchandise done for Plymouth Co and others is going to HIT this market of kids age 8-15...<GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG>
POPULAR CULTURE
Pokeman rules!
From street corner to Wall Street, Pikachu and his pals are hot.
By Johanna Seltz, 08/29/99
chools around the nation ban them. Parents claim their kids are
addicted to them. Normally responsible adults waste countless dollars
and hours searching obscure malls and dusty novelty shops for them.
What is it about Pokemon anyway?
For the uninitiated, Pokemon is the latest toy-collectible craze, sort of a
Beanie Baby meets Pogs meets Ninja Turtles, only bigger. It comes in a
multitude of buyable forms, all built around an elaborate game with
trading-card spinoff. Its appeal spans gender and age; preschool girls to
preteen boys are, it seems, equally susceptible to Pokemon obsession.
And obsessed they are. What distinguishes Pokemon from other toy crazes
is its intensity. Stores can't keep Pokemon trading cards in stock. Video
stores can't keep the tapes on the shelves. Young devotees spend countless
hours arranging card trades - on-line bidding is popular - with the most
prized cards fetching far more than the average allowance. On the stock
market, Pokemon is the main driver behind several companies' exceptional
stock gains in recent weeks. On Wednesday, for example, Grand Toys
International, maker of Pokemon balls and school supplies, saw its stock
rise 50 percent.
In short, Pokemon is no longer just a toy craze. It's a cultural phenomenon.
Pokemon started in Japan four years ago as a hand-held Nintendo game. It
became infamous when one especially vivid cartoon episode (not shown in
the United States) made 700 Japanese kids succumb to nausea, vomiting,
and seizures. But its promoters were undeterred; a card game and eventually
more than 1,000 products followed, generating billions in sales worldwide.
Introduced in the United States just last September, Pokemon has spawned
everything from action figures to books to Oscar Mayer ''lunchables.'' And
it's only going to get more intense; a feature-length Pokemon film from
Warner Brothers debuts this fall. A spokesman for the company promoting
Pokemon in the United States estimates more than $10 million will be spent
once the movie is promoted. Already the animated TV show tops the ratings
on children's TV.
Unlike other youth culture crazes, parents seem to know relatively little
about Pokemon. When, say, ''Star Wars'' captured the imagination of the
younger set, all parents had to do was see the movie to know what was
going on, and judge whether it was suitable. But it's harder to crack the
world of Pokemon.
Those who do learn that everything revolves around 151 Pokemon - short
for ''pocket monsters'' - who are, for the most part, cute little creatures with
names like Pikachu and Drowzee and Charmander. Each is endowed with
its own special powers. The rules of the game are incredibly complex - think
''rock, paper, scissors'' on steroids - but the object is simple: to capture
every Pokemon and become a Pokemon master.
Those parents who fear Pokemon is too violent can more or less relax.
While battle is a central theme, it's not your basic blood-and-guts standoff.
When a Pokemon loses a fight, it faints, rather than dies. The philosophy of
the game emphasizes strategy over brute strength. Some have called the
game ''politically correct.'' A better label might be ''parent-friendly,''
relatively speaking.
So what's the appeal to kids? And should we worry that the Pokemon
obsession has become too intense?
''The combination of cute and cuddly, violent and intellectually stimulating is
unbeatable,'' said psychologist Susan Linn, associate director of the Media
Center at Judge Baker Children's Center in Boston. ''There's nothing else
like it. It gets kids on a lot of different levels.''
''That doesn't mean it's particularly good for children,'' said Linn, who is
offended by the blatant consumerism involved in a product with the
Pokemon rallying cry - ''Gotta catch [read: buy] 'em all.''
''It's another brilliant seduction of America's children,'' Linn said. ''Parents
need to be aware that it's a manipulation of their children, by people making
lots of money off their kids.''
Dr. Michael Jellinek, chief of child psychiatry at Massachusetts General
Hospital, has a more benign view after watching the TV show and playing
the game with his 10-year-old son, Isaiah.
''It looks like a typical school-age game, a rehearsal for life,'' he said. ''You
try to follow certain rules. If you do, you get certain rewards. If you don't,
you get certain punishments. There are some people who are mean; there
are some people who are good.
''To play, you have to use your intellect, you have to read the cards. It's
using school-age cognitive abilities and applying them, so I think it's fine. It
hits the developmental needs of children, assists it. Kids don't know they
need it, they just enjoy it. It's like a kid at the right age with a ball.''
Others point to Pokemon's connection with kids' compulsion to collect and
pre-adolescents' need to master skills, their fascination with power and
transforming.
''These are the same kids who would have been involved with comic books
in the '40s and '50s,'' says Dr. Michael Brody, a child psychiatrist who
teaches a course on children and television at the University of Maryland.
The difference, he says, is the sophistication of the marketing that fuels a fad
like Pokemon. Not only are the ads better, but the Internet provides massive
new ways to market. Every chat room is like a commercial, a way to get
people talking about the products. Besides the official Pokemon Web pages,
a popular search engine turns up more than 480,000 references to the fad.
''When there's a television tie-in, it's golden,'' Brody said. ''The show
becomes like an informational, like Cher selling hair products.''
''Their advertising is so brilliant it's almost frightening,'' adds Clive
Thompson, video game columnist and New York editor for Shift magazine,
a journal of culture and new technologies. ''Everything is seamlessly tied in.
All the components feed into consumption.''
For example: The ''Pokemon'' television show is basically a Cliff's Notes for
the game, detailing situations players may encounter and explaining
strategies. The goal of the video game is to ''Catch 'em all'' - but you can't
do it without buying a special cable to connect with another player.
Thompson says the game itself is good enough that it became a cult hit on its
own before the marketing blitz took over.
''It has simplicity that allows kids to get in really quickly and staggering
complexity that allows kids to stay in for months and months,'' he said.
''That's why kids are into it. It's a very deeply involving game.''
Should parents worry that their kids are too involved? Jellinek says it's not
usually a problem.
''There are some kids who find this their claim to fame, a winning ticket to
friendship,'' he said. ''They may be consumed by it for social reasons.
Another group of kids is intellectually very ready. Like kids who get
immersed in chess, learning all the rules fascinates them.
''Another group may be depressed or socially isolated and use this for a
substitute for interaction. But this is true for anything - sports as well as
Pokemon. With any of these things you have to make sure kids are having
fun, interacting in other areas and that this isn't part of a pattern. In general
these types of fads are fun and exciting, and I don't worry about them.''
As for the complaint that kids are bankrupting their parents, Jellinek says the
culprit isn't Pokemon. ''This is not atypical for a society that consumes,'' he
said. ''But that's going to be true of sneakers as well as Pokemon cards.
There has to be some discussion of what's reasonable, what are the family's
values.''
Michael Levy, the Charles Clarke Reynolds professor of marketing at
Babson College, goes even further.
''There are some really interesting lessons to be learned by participating in
the dynamics of this market,'' he said. ''Kids can really learn about capitalism
at work. I know parents can get upset, but if they step back, they can see
it's a very small price to teach their kids basic economics.''
''I just love to see these things take off,'' he added. ''They make a few new
millionaires in the world, and then they die. It's capitalism at its best. There's
nothing wrong with that. It makes everybody happy.''
Steven Atkins, a child psychologist at Dartmouth Medical School, is less
sanguine about the money involved in the fad, especially for kids from poor
families who want to fit in. But he's not bothered by the game itself.
''From what I see, it's interactive, they're socializing, strategizing. Anything
that has kids talking together is a good thing.''
In fact, playing Pokemon requires intense cooperation, according to video
game authority Thompson. ''You have to talk to other kids about it to figure
it out. A lot of the allure of the game is in the information sharing.
''It's also one of the most pleasant games I've seen in years,'' he added.
''You open up the rule book and it says you should respect authority,
cooperate with people, and try to learn and study as much as you can.
''It's almost offensively nice - the Barney of video games. It's hilariously
nonviolent. The fights are totally nonviolent skirmishes and when the
characters get vanquished they faint and you take them to a spa to get
replenished. In Pokemon Snap (another game), the point is to take pictures
of them. What could be more pacifist than that?''
Thirteen-year-old Joe McReynolds, a Californian who vacations with his
family in Orleans, has a complete set of cards, the video game, and a few
action figures. He plays in tournaments almost every Saturday and estimates
he's spent about $500 on Pokemon since he caught the bug.
''How did I find out about it? Everyone talked about it, it was in the video
game magazines, on the Internet,'' he says. ''It's a natural pop culture fad.
You can't avoid it even if you wanted to.''
This story ran on page E01 of the Boston Globe on 08/29/99.
© Copyright 1999 Globe Newspaper Company.
|
