Throwback Thursdays: Pokemon Edition

I don’t know about you, but when I was 9 years old I had a major obsession with Pokemon. I’m not going to lie, I still play Gold Version in the back of the lecture hall. Makes class more bearable. But there were so many facets to these weird creatures, it’d be hard to squeeze it into just one part of this column. So America’s favorite Japanese nonsense gets an entire Throwback Thursday to itself.

The Game

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tTc8__lXkM[/youtube]

Pokemon is probably the greatest game ever released on Gameboy. It never loses its playability, despite me growing well out of my childhood and into an age where I should be embarrassed by the fact that I still play it…I’m not. And they release new versions all the time with strange new Pokemon that don’t make any sense to my adult mind. But regardless of that, the game is still a great waste of time. You’ll lose days of your life trying to catch ’em all.

The Show

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ux8mJUexBcM[/youtube]

Ash, Misty, and Brock – three best friends on the great journey to become Pokemon masters. If it wasn’t for the show, Yellow Version would have never existed. Unfortunately, Pikachu isn’t so strong in the game, and you’re totally stuck with him. But in the show he was capable of beating a much more powerful Raichu (yes, I remember the episode with Lt. Surge, call me a herb – I don’t care). The show must have lost its appeal after a while, because I have no memory of Ash ever getting to the Pokemon League. The movie with Mewtwo was some good ish, though.

The Cards

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41U-ndW_7oc[/youtube]

These babies pulled in money like it was no one’s business. The show and game were fun and all, but NOTHING compared to addictiveness of the Pokemon Trading Card Game. I’m not even sure that anyone knew how to play – I always just swindled people for good cards. Remember how much stores used to charge for one pack? That’s good to know, considering that even the rarest cards are completely worthless today. To this day, I still have my holographic Charizard card, packed away somewhere in the bowels of my garage.

Bonus Throwback: Burger King Toys

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xw5PqgPjIk4[/youtube]

Even Burger King got in on the Pokemon craze. They produced vast amounts of toys that were touted as collectible. They even had their own crappy versions of the cards for the kids who didn’t have $10 to buy a pack, but had $5 to get a kids’ meal. Each toy came in a Pokeball, and kids used to walk around with 10 or 20 of them all linked together. Eventually they got banned from my elementary school (like everything else) because kids weren’t doing work – just playing Pokemon ALL THE TIME. And they had that gold Mew thing, too. I totally wasted $5 on that crap. Come to think of it, I’d have so much more money today if it wasn’t for Pokemon.