A MUST READ, shorts especially. Do not underestimate the power of Pokemon. The heavy retail demand resulting from glowing, learned articles such as this one and extensive TV coverage would cause a stock with ten times this float to go asymptotic.
We've only seen the tip of the iceberg so far. Any insider selling rights before the movie hits the streets is plain stupid. However, if the company can obtain working capital at a good price by selling authorized shares along the way more power to them, like putting money in the bank the way I see it. If selling is done with an eye toward balancing flows, it's not a problem.
___
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. |
