While I was visiting a museum during 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:my vacation last week, I spotted a kid in a Pokemon t-shirt. That alone isn't noteworthy — Pokemon is still the biggest entertainment property in the world, after all — but what did stick out to me is how little the design has changed since I was a kid wearing Pokemon t-shirts.
The First Gen Starters Still Matter
The shirt in question could easily have been on store shelves in the 1990s. It exclusively featured 'mons from the first 151, namely the four original starters. There was nothing flashy about the design that screamed 2024. I could tell it wasn't a hand-me-down from the '90s, though; it still looked new, with bright colors and materials that didn't appear worn down. This young Pokemon fan was wearing a new shirt that, 25 years earlier, an OG Pokemon fan could have seen on store shelves without batting an eye.
The omnipresence of Pokemon sometimes makes it difficult to fully comprehend how much time has actually passed since the monster-catching series debuted. Though Pokemon's cultural dominance has waxed and waned — exploding back into the limelight at certain moments like the 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Pokemon Go-inaugurating summer of 2016 before quieting down again — it never actually went anywhere. The games have always sold incredibly well, and there has never been a time in my life when I could stop into a Walmart and browse the game section without seeing Pokemon games for sale. More than even 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Star Wars or the MCU, the Pokemon franchise is a well-oiled machine.
Pokemon Red Is How Old?
But then I do the math and realize that my experience playing Red, Blue, and Yellow around the time they were released in North America is not the norm for most Pokemon fans today. Those games are old. Pokémon Red is three years older now than Pong was at Pokemon Red's launch. I would give you an example of a game that matches Pokemon Red’s age directly, but that would take us back to the time before playing video games at home even existed. It’s weird for culture to have been this fixated on one thing for this long. It’s weird for my 30-year-old friends to have kids that can go buy brand new merch that is nearly identical to the stuff our parents bought for us when we were in kindergarten.
Other franchises, like Star Wars, have progressed. My parents’ generation had the original trilogy. My generation had the prequels. Zoomers had the sequels. And kid🐟s growing up now have the Disney+ shows. You might see someone wearing a shirt♓ with the original movie’s poster art, but that’s intentionally retro. The merch I see online with the first generation starters is, by and large, not calling attention to the length of time since these characters entered the zeitgeist.
In general, I think that pop culture fixating for so long on the same franchises is bad. It’s not great that creators like J.J. Abrams, Jon Favreau, and Dave Filoni went to work on continuations of the stuff they loved as kids instead of contributing new things to the culture.🗹 It all adds to the sense that entertainment industries are only interested in regurgitating nostalgia rather than introducing new things that speak to our current moment.
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Bulbasaur Is Bugs Bunny
But what I'm noticing with Pokemon is a little different than that. Pokemon has continued to introduce new creatures and is nearing a milestone tenth generation. The series has, in fact, evolved, just like Star Wars, offering new monsters for each new group of kids who fall in love with the games.
The difference is that Pokemon's public image has more in common with Mickey Mouse and Winnie the Pooh — which are also among the highest-grossing entertainment properties — than with Star Wars. Though Pokemon is continually expanding, it introduced us to its Goofy, Tigger, and Bugs Bunny back in the '90s. Squirtle, Pikachu, Bulbasaur, and Charmander are mascots more than they are characters. Mickey Mouse has less cache as an entertainment figure than he did in previous decades, but people don't buy a mouse ear hat at DisneyWorld just because they love Steamboat Willie. Mickey symbolizes something bigger than himself, and the original starters do, too.
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