Pokémon in Ireland

Move over furby, pokemon's about to take over

Thursday August 12 1999
A new toy craze is sweeping Japan and the States and is set to top kiddies' wish lists here. John Meagher looks at the Pokemon phenomenon A new toy craze is sweeping Japan and the States and is set to top kiddies' wish lists here. John Meagher looks at the Pokemon phenomenon Thought Star Wars was going to dominate the Christmas toy market? Think again. Come January, eight-inch figurines of Obi Wan Kanobi could be making way for a series of toys far uglier than anything in The Phantom Menace.
Pokemons are the latest must-have toys for kids-in-the-know. Short for Pocket Monsters, they comprise a staggering 150 characters. They began life five years ago as tiny figures on Ninetendo's GameBoy, the object being to `collect' as many of these characters as possible. Toys based on the computer game will be available on these shores next month.
With each character having its very own super-cool name, you'll soon become accustomed to Pikachu, Jigglypuff and Snorlax. If Power Rangers and Cabbage Patch Dolls aren't at the back of the toy cupboard already, with this lot around they well and truly will be.
The toys come in a variety of forms. Electronic Pokemon (pronounced poh-kay-mon) are three-inch plastic character figures that `talk' when stroked or spoken to.
There is also a set of smaller `battle figures' two inches high that come with instructions on how to play a game involving exchanging the figures with friends, as well as a set of clear rubber balls containing one of the eight characters and a set of Beanie characters aimed at girls.
Besides the toys and GameBoy, there's a plethora of Pokemon merchandise available. A Pokemon television series has been syndicated to 90 stations worldwide. Videos and comics will be on the shelves soon. And the Pokemon film is a box office success in Japan - where it all originated.
And there's more. Japan's national airline, Nippon, has six aircraft within its fleet with full Pokemon liveries, flying non-stop from Tokyo to San Francisco. And for the over-17s, there is a bespoke Volkswagen Pokemon Beetle. Branded salads, lemonades and cookies are just some of the 1,000 products available in the US Pokemon has been phenomenally successful in Japan. Half of all five to 12-year-olds there have at least one Pokemon toy and Ninetendo has sold more than £4.5 billion in Pokemon products there.
Ireland will have its first batch of Pokemon toys on the shelves by October. ``It doesn't necessarily follow that if a toy is popular in the US or Britain that it will be just as popular here, but we really think it will be a big hit,'' says Toymaster's managing director, Ciaran Fitzpatrick.
``Simple toys like these are excellent for young children,'' says the Dublin-based child psychologist, Ella Lovett. ``Because the toys are limited in what they can do, the child needs to use his/her imagination much more. Some parents want their children to read avidly, but they forget how useful creative playing can be. Children can enter their own make-believe world.''
The key to Pokemon's global success is the clever way it cashes in on children's desire to compete and collect. By releasing just a few figures at a time children are expected to buy some, trade others and, if reports from America and Japan mean anything, resort to mugging in a quest for the whole set.