In 1973, Japanese food company Calbee started attaching free collectable baseball player cards to its potato chip packets (and continues to do so today). It was mimicking a trend that had already taken off in tobacco markets in Japan and overseas. Baseball, Japan’s national sport, was an obvious choice for Calbee to attract consumers.
Some four years later, rival company Lotte joined the trend, launching a chocolate wafer snack with Bikkuriman “surprise man” stickers. These stickers quickly caught on – and eventually spawned an entire fantasy world that made its way to anime and manga.
Both Calbee and Lotte helped set a template for how children’s collectables could become objects of desire, competition and, later, nostalgia. Bikkuriman is still sold today, with rare 1980s Super Zeus stickers going for thousands of dollars to adult collectors.
It was against this backdrop that Satoshi Tajiri (born 1965) grew up. He would have been about 12 when the first Bikkuriman card was released. Satoshi himself would end up creating one of the most popular collectable card games in the world: Pokémon.
These cards are now so highly coveted they are driving international crime, getting banned from schools, and locked behind glass cabinets in stores.
Creating the cultural conditions for a hit
Satoshi drew on a childhood memory when he created Pokémon (short for “Pocket Monsters”): catching insects and trading them with friends.
He imagined a Nintendo Game Boy game where players could collect and exchange monsters. After seven years in development, Pocket Monsters Red and Green launched in February 1996. This was followed by a trading card game in October.
In 1997, the anime began airing on Japanese television, with a protagonist also named Satoshi (the name still used in Japan today). Pikachu – originally just one of 151 monsters – became the face of the franchise.
Like Bikkuriman, Pocket Monster spread rapidly across games, TV and print media. But unlike Bikkuriman, it also aimed to cross borders.
The English-language version of the game was released in 1998, with its name changed to Pokémon. “Pocket Monsters” may have sounded awkward, or even suggestive, to English speakers. Although it remains the official name in Japan, most Japanese fans also use the portmanteau, Pokémon.
Character names were also adapted and anglicised for overseas audiences.
For instance, Satoshi became Ash. Nyarth, a bipedal cat thought to be inspired by the Japanese lucky charm maneki-neko, became Meowth, to match the English-language cat sound. (Pikachu, drawing on the Japanese onomatopoeia of “pika” and “chu”, was retained.)
Soon enough, the character names, types and Pokédex numbers became shared internationally, allowing players the world over to connect through a shared Pokémon language. In 2004, the first World Championship for the Pokémon Trading Card Game was held in the United States.
Squirtle in your neighbourhood
It’s difficult for any single commodity to maintain popularity over decades. During the early 2010s, Nintendo suffered significantly, even falling into deficit, and the Pokémon franchise faced competition from rivals such as Yu-Gi-Oh! and Yo-Kai Watch.
The old-school model of marketing through traditional media was no longer enough for global dominance. To survive, Pokémon would need to adopt the logic of new media platforms – and catch the eye of the online generation. Then came Pokémon GO.
The 2016 smartphone app was developed by American software company Niantic, in collaboration with Nintendo and The Pokémon Company.
Through augmented reality, parks, shopping streets and neighbourhoods gained new meaning as potential locations for your next Pokémon catch. One grandfather in Taiwan made the news for using 64 smartphones at once.
Some players even travelled internationally to capture region-exclusive Pokémon, such as Kangaskhan in Australia, which was clearly modelled on a kangaroo.
Downloaded more than 500 million times, the enormous success of Pokémon GO played a key role in re-energising the global Pokémon fandom. Many players sought out the cards they had collected as children.
Interest was further amplified by the release of Pokémon TCG Pocket. Released in 2024, this app digitised the old-school Japanese tabletop to make it accesible for all.
Photo courtesy of Yoshimi Akaishi
Chasing profits and childhood memories
Then there was another, less predictable factor that drove the popularity of Pokémon cards: COVID lockdowns. With more time at home, people dug out old binders and rediscovered their childhood cards – many of which had high value – and began trading to make money.
This has led to a renewed interest in rare cards such as the Pikachu Illustrator, which was distributed in 1998 to the winners of an illustration contest. The card features artwork by Atsuko Nishida, Pikachu’s original designer. With only 39 copies known to exist, collectors call it the “holy grail” of Pokémon cards.
Earlier this year, influencer Logan Paul sold his Pikachu Illustrator for US$16.492 million, setting a record for the most expensive trading card ever sold.
This potential for profit has led to a surge in Pokémon card-related crime, as the cards are easy to carry, hide and move internationally. We’ve seen a wave of burglaries targeting hobby shops all over the world, including in Australia, the US and Japan.
Many fans may now find themselves unable to purchase cards due to the economic bubble. Still, it seems demand is high; roughly 10.2 billion cards were printed from 2024 to 2025.
Pokémon cards are a rare kind of tangible object. They connect the digital to the physical – the past to the present – and Japan to the world. They aren’t just collectables; they are a cultural currency, which, unfortunately, can be stolen.
