My youngest is 12 and when he started collecting at 3 people were like this with him at shops. They still are today. It’s pretty awesome to see people being cool to kids about Pokémon.
I was around 10 or 11 when Pokemon first made its impact in the U.S. (obviously it had already been big in Japan).
I VIVIDLY remember all the panic on the news about how Pokemon was "making our kids dumber" and that it would be a negative influence on the next generation.
Watching videos like this, 25+ years later...really soothes the soul and reminds me...never to surrender to negativity and panic.
Reminds me of how Dungeons and Dragons was treated in the 80s. Evil and not good for people, even though it helps promote team-building and working together, as well as creativity.
Lawful Good? (Depending on a person's point of view) probably has ridiculous +3 and +4 equipment. Ring of the Fisherman, Holy Slippers, Papal Mitre, Papal Ferula (pastoral staff), Papal Robes. His Turn Undead is legit.
I saw somewhere that there were 3 people in Vatican City who either downloaded BG3 on steam or had it on their wishlist. So maybe the Pope is getting there
I can't speak for everyone, but my experience growing up and evangelical christian was that almost all other churches were too liberal and made too many worldly concessions. We weren't allowed to play pokemon, listen to music that was non-christian (even wholesome stuff) excluding a couple of Disney titles, couldn't go see anything at a movie theater. There's probably more but I'm blanking now.
We had a whole lotta rules you can't find in the Bible
That's not how any genre was created but okay then. I am going to assume the sub genre is Satanic Metal. As someone who has been in a metal band and made death and satanic metal? That's religious trauma mostly for a significant number of the bands out there. Catholics included. There's a reason most of the satanic metal bands have Catholic inspired set pieces. Some more successful than others. If it's not that one feel free to illuminate me
Let me clarify: I meant that evangelical Christians created Contemporary Christian Music as a response to rock music in the 60s and and 70s. They made their own music industry with their own labels and awards ceremonies and everything.
To your point, I agree that there is no genre that is specifically a reaction to a certain religion. Much music in general is a reaction to religion, though. Good or bad.
Thank you for clarifying. I did debate if you meant the Christian music of all genres that exists. It's definitely mediocre most of the time (I have 0 examples of it not being mediocre but I'm open to the idea). I think this is because of the need to avoid upsetting people or being cast out. You know, avoid salt and seasoning and eat the blandest food for stomach troubles but the music version. I think the idea it was out of need is propaganda. It's capitalism. Profiting off of the fear and low spice tolerance
The Christian Music Industry was mostly a place for people without enough talent to hack it in the regular music industry. There were plenty of examples of mediocre bands who "found Jesus" and then got fame in Christian circles. They sucked before they "converted" and they still sucked after. The outliers who were actually good usually went on to transcend the Christian Music Industry scene (ex., Reliant K).
wasn't mtg under fire by the catholic church in the early 90s for the pentagrams drawn on demonic tutor and unholy strength? though i'm inclined to believe you about them being super relaxed nowadays
Yeah, too many people conflate Catholicism with all Christians. The Catholics are certainly no saints (heh), but the Satanic panic was more the Jack Chick style of Christians.
In fact, the evangelical protestants are more likely to call Catholics themselves the devil.
I remember my mom took for ever to finally come around to pokemon because she thought it was satanic. It wasn’t until she finally saw what pokemon was that she realized she was wrong and got me and brother our first pokemon game
Stuff like this makes me wonder if a group of Cardinals in Rome had to be convened or whatever to review some episodes and write a ruling or something. Lol
I prefer to imagine that — rather than imagining that some intern in their PR office handles things like that.
My brother gave our nephew (our sister's son) all of his old Pokémon cards when he first started showing interest. He struggles so much with reading and wanting to learn how to play was a big motivator for him. I buy him Pokémon cards for Christmas and his birthday (he asks for them still, he's 10) because anything that helps him in his quest for knowledge I want to support.
I still know so many random bugs because that's one of his interests. Reddit was a huge help with that one!
Well it does depend - but I think all of elementary school you’re learning that. It’s not like someone fresh out of kindergarten or first grade is going to be able to read everything out there. Plus, all kids learn at different paces, as long as they’re learning I think that’s all that really matters
To add to the previous reply to your comment, at 7 you're still at a low level of reading. You're not reading higher level novels and whatnot, while Pokémon (and other IP) provide an interesting bridge to speed up that sort of development... so it's less that they're learning how to read, and more that they're heavily improving their reading at a faster pace.
others answered before I did and they pretty much covered it, 7 is 2nd grade, and I think he started playing when he was 6. but yeah some kids have issues learning to read for whatever reason, and dyslexia does run in the family. sometimes it takes a little longer for it to click, i remember some kids in my 3rd grade class were really behind on reading, and that was in the 90s, before the current iPad generation, which is having a lot of issues in literacy.
Same. I was in Pre-K and remember flipping through the book for the game and playing at lunch, learning to read more and more so I could keep getting further in the game.
Things like video games and trading card games were a huge reason to figure out all kinds of problem-solving, math, art, and general media literacy.
Such a fucking great game. First game to ever use the Rumble Pak btw. And that multiplayer was amazing for the time.
One really underappreciated aspect of that game is that it really doesn't take that long either. You can finish the whole game in probably 1.5 hours and still feel like you got your money's worth
I know people are nostalgic about their childhood, but I for one am not.
It really wasn't until I got older when I realized how stupid and in desperate need of serious medication/therapy a lot of my teachers were. I didn't realize that my schooling experience suffered from a serious lack of imagination and creativity...and an understanding that there are many paths to the same educational and learning goals.
That failure of imagination and creativity honestly impacted a lot of society back then.
Pokemon gave me a massive head start in learning english. When we started studying it in school i was already way past most people in my class and that carried out all through school
Yeah I was just about to say that while it didn’t teach me to read, playing the games was good practice when I was young. Some of my oldest memories are playing Sapphire and Emerald on my gameboy, and still go out of my way to play the new ones 20 years later just to relive my childhood.
I might be biased but I think Pokémon games are one of if not the best games a kid can play. No voice lines means that kids have to actively be reading to play, type matchups etc make it more than just a button masher, and it has a social aspect of battling or trading with friends.
I had to learn to read earlier than most kids solely because my mom started getting mad and refusing to read moves/Strategy guides to me when gold/silver were released and i wasnt gonna let something dumb like being barely 6 stop me
I honestly would rather have my 2-year-old grow up learning a game that includes math, typology, strategy, and socializing with other kids in-person than languishing on a tablet. That actually sounds marvellous.
Pokémon Blue was the first game I ever beat lol. My
Mom gave it to me right before a road trip to Colorado from the east coast. I had all the gym badges by the time I got home and CHEWED through batteries the entire time. Good memories
"I had all the gym badges by the time I got home and CHEWED through batteries the entire time."
I hate saying this lol b/c I sound like an old fogie, but kids these days seriously have NO idea whatsoever what this was like lmao.
I was deprived of video games as a kid so I remember playing my cousin's Game Boy so long to the point that the batteries literally popped lol. The next time my cousin let me play her Game Boy, she had it attached to these battery saving packs that look ridiculous now, but man I thought they were the greatest thing ever at the time lmao
Same here man! Technically probably the 2nd and 3rd games I ever beat too. I got Red as a gift from a relative that didn't know I had Blue, so I beat that right after I finished Blue lol. Then since I had both I'd trade all my friends the exclusives that theirs didn't have. Good times.
Card and board games foster social engagement in kids who are otherwise socially awkward, enhance problem solving and math skills, and are relatively safe and easy to monitor for parents and guardians.
Never understood how everyone is onboard with toddlers “learning through play” but suddenly kids hit 10 years old and people think everything that’s not going on a college application is a waste of time.
"Never understood how everyone is onboard with toddlers “learning through play” but suddenly kids hit 10 years old and people think everything that’s not going on a college application is a waste of time."
There's a really great museum in Rochester, New York called The Strong Museum of Play. It is devoted entirely to childhood play. There's a section on Sesame Street, comic books, TONS AND TONS of children toys, and they opened a brand new section on the history of video games. It also hosts both the National Toy Hall of Fame and the World Video Game Hall of Fame. The whole ethos of that museum is the importance of play in our development and our lives, and how we should embrace it, and not treat it dismissively.
I've gone several times, but man my last visit back in 2023 and seeing the new section on the history of video games weirdly made me emotional...because I had been bullied for loving video games as a kid, and my dad was also super anti-video games. Seeing that whole wing devoted to people who worked on video games and seeing them treated as an important art form that had a positive impact on human development...that was incredible. Definitely recommended.
I find so strange that they called pokemon, a game half about memorizing things like types, matchups, and heck even memorizing all the pokemon and their types is seen as a thing you wanna do in the fanbase and there are over 1000 pokemon and that plus memorizing their types thats almost 3000 things to memorize, I'd argue that pokemon actually makes kids smarter as it helps them learn basic math, critical thinking, and memorization from a young age which has been proven to have major positive effects on young kids.
also adding to my point, pokemon straight up taught me how to spell a lot of words, I've always struggled on spelling and grammar to the point I was failing to spell words like teach in fifth grade and even now I still have difficulties with spelling and grammar, learning about how the pokemon were named helped me remember how to spell each of the words and although this wasn't strictly because of pokemon roleplaying pokemon on roblox (because ofc I did) taught me how to spell many tricky words, I still vividly remember struggling to spell the word "crystal" for weeks but while messing around with some people in a rp that revolved around Diancie I remember the word "crystal" just clicked in my head because of the pokemon, or the word knowledge because my favorite pokemon at the time was uxie and I wanted to talk about it
Everything in the 90's and 2000's were a cause for alarm at the time, pokemon, anime, boybands, rock music, the internet, and so on. I remember my former church tell the congregation the pokemon was from the devil. Lololol
Yah I was in elementary school when it started hitting hard with the shows and cards. My mom thought it was the Japanese trying to corrupt our kids (there was a big economic scare with them at that time).
Anyways my dad bought me a bunch of card packs and I still have most of them to this day. Should really check to see if any are worth money but I’ll probably hold them as keepsakes.
It reminds me whenever I have kids to never tell them their toys are junk & wastes of money like my parents did lol & encourage them to take really good care of them cause one day if they ever decide they've lost interest those same toys might take really good care of them.
I can’t do long division but I can still name every one of the first 251 Pokémon, movesets, the names of the towns, and shit even a good chunk of the trainers you encounter and what Pokemon they have when you do.
I was a kid when this happened (probably around the same age as you) and I remember the panic stemming from the 'evolution' phrasing and just...general concept. Super random bc Pokemon is cute and fun and one of the more wholesome things your kids could be doing lol.
I was 6 and still remember satanic panic around pokemon. My religious parents that had just got me pokemon stuff for Christmas burned it all a couple months later.
Still remember when my school back when I was in year 5 if I remember correctly, had banned pokemon cards because they believed it was giving the children a "gambling problem" and even now my niece's school has banned rubber ducks because some kid hid them around school and they were trading them for different colours. I guess schools and the news really hate kids having fun
You know… Reading that last paragraph gave me a little hope for the future. I needed that reality check, desperately.
Thank you so much.
Edit: I really wanted to give you an award, but I can’t because I don’t have any gold. So, here: 🏆
Edit 2: I almost took my own life today. If I had, I never would have seen this post and comment. All the more reason why I’m grateful and pushed through my turmoil. 🩷
I was around 15 or so. My mom started dating a guy whose kids were really into Pokémon. One lost their Game Boy Color with Pokémon Yellow and his grandmother bought him a new one. Later, he found it and gave it to me.
Saved my cards and later gave them to my daughter.
I still remember going out at hazy summer evenings and seeing local kids play Pokémon pogs and trading non playable collectible cards all across the street. So many of them! Me? I lost one of my few pogs in the very first game and decided to never play for keeps again.
Pokémon as a franchise has been around long enough now to be cherished by multiple generations, when you think about it. At the end of the day, it’s a kid’s game and I’m happy to see some older-gen collectors are generous to the younger cohorts to keep the franchise popular.
Small town, there was this little Internet Cafe with all sorts of nerdy accruement. A young child goes up to the older lady who ran the place and she accidentally misgendered the young girl. When she realized her mistake, she lit up with excitement seeing a young girl getting into Pokémon and their excitement just made the whole place buzz with good vibes. Almost three decades ago and I’ll never forget: some good eggs out there running these shops.
A few years ago I was in a comic book store and this little boy started looking at me funny. I asked him if he had a favourite Pokémon, and the way his jaw dropped. “YOU like Pokémon??”
Anyway before I left I bought him a booster pack. His favourite Pokémon was Scyther and he didn’t believe that my favourite is Bidoof.
My five year old used to geek out super hard whenever he saw Pokemon cards, somebody saw him doing it once and bought him one of the big starter packs. So it's gotta be a thing. My buddy that's big into collecting always gives my kids packs when he comes over too
My daughter used to carry a ratata plushie everywhere, to the point it was well past maimed and only just recognisable - she and I had gone to an event when she was 3 and a stall owner chased us down and said "your little pokemon there looks like he could use a trip to the pokemon center, can I?" then he disappeared with the toy and came back with a new one "see nurse joy can work magic" and handed it to her, he also gave me the old one in a bag so she couldn't see it - I'm assuming incase it had to be the og at bedtime or something, it's in her memory box now but the new one is starting to resemble the old one after so much love.
We saw him at another event a couple years later and I brought my little one a big trubbish (that she loves but not as much as the rat) and got myself an umbreon (because he's always been my favourite, he reminds me of my childhood dog) and a few other things like lanyards and stuff and he recognised us because my daughter was still carrying ratata around at 6 aha. I wonder if we will see him again in future - he was really kind and when we first met I was a single dad with limited income, that ratata replacement saved my ass as I couldn't afford to get a new one for her at the time. I will always perchase things from him when I see him now as honestly he deserves it.
I think it's because most people who are adults that collect/pay attention to pokemon, got into pokemon as children.
We can all remember that joy and magic of watching that show, playing those games, etc. I can remember in vivid detail playing pokemon blue on a green gameboy pocket on christmas morning. Sitting next to my older brother who got his own gameboy pocket with pokemon red. (Which now that I'm thinking about it, I don't know how the fuck my parents could possibly have afforded that. About to text my parents right now because what the hell were they thinking)
That memory is crystallized in my mind, so whenever I think about Pokemon, that's the feelings it elicits. Seeing some other little kid who likes pokemon now (my son included), when I'm older than my mother was when I got that gift, is like a bridge across time. Those little dorks are me.
I still watch it with my 12 year old and it was something special finally getting to see Ash Ketchum becoming the Grand League Champion after all of these years and to see it together.
Same experience here! My sons starting collecting about a year ago and there’s a small shop in our town. The nicest people and they have put additional pieces in their bags or rounded to a lower dollar amount for the kids.
There’s also a small independent game store here in town called Game Force owned by 3 buddies. We live in Aurora, Co and they have opened doubled packs of like Scarlett and Violet before when my kid already owned Violet to sell them Scarlett because my kid had come in looking for Scarlett four weeks in a row and they remembered them.
I think it’s kind of a gamer thing. Some gamers are just nice to kids and they remember what it was like to be that kid.
Yes! My son went to his first trading night around age 8 and the older teens were so sweet and really kind to him; gave him a few goodies too! The best fans!
I’m a baseball guy and solely buy Pokémon to give out. If I ever want these kids to care about buying the cards in 20 years you gotta make the space awesome for them as kids. It also helps to clear our name from the dudes taking everything off of retail shelves for resale.
I was his age when I owned the first ever pokemon cards. I don’t collect them as an adult (I play MTG) but honestly know I would be like this with a kid and Pokemon and I’m glad to see others are too.
It's a franchise that nearly two generations of kids have passed the torch forward on. We all remember being that young and the show or games being completely new.
2.8k
u/ghouldozer19 Feb 10 '25
My youngest is 12 and when he started collecting at 3 people were like this with him at shops. They still are today. It’s pretty awesome to see people being cool to kids about Pokémon.