Articles

Pokemon and the Press =As Pokemon started in 1998 it has become more and more advanced and there have been the ups and downs. Who would have known that a simple video, and later a card game could turn into such a money making industry. The craze became so huge that eventually the involvement police activity and law suits were needed and used to settle disputes and provide justice for "Pokemon" crimes. The 1999 article below (only one year after Pokemon was released) tells about how it has already had cases that involved crimes and police intervention.= = = =New York Times Article= = http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res = 9802EEDD153EF937A35751C1A96F958260&scp=1&sq=pokemon%20mania&st=cse -= = = = Pokemon Mania Takes On Criminal Proportions = =By ROBERT HANLEY= Published: December 4, 1999 Sometimes a Pokemon is just a Pokemon. And sometimes the children's phenomenon of the moment becomes so ubiquitous it is hard not to see it as an inescapable, if elusive, window onto the moment. Consider this week. Police here say they have broken up a $1 million Pokemon card counterfeiting ring, pushing the total value of bogus Pokemon products seized in North America since May to $20 million. In Bridgeport, Conn., a 9-year-old boy hid in a downtown store until it closed, tried to steal 44 packs of Pokemon cards and $600, and, trapped in the locked store, called 911 for help. And, in a clash of Asian and Western culture and religion, Nintendo of America, which controls Pokemon licensing in North America and Europe, persuaded its parent company in Japan to stop printing a Japanese symbol of hope on Japanese-language Pokemon cards because it resembles a swastika and offended customers in the United States. What lifted Pokemon from a card game to a zillion-dollar phenomenon may be a process too mysterious to comprehend. Kids value Pokemon in an hysterical, passionate way, said Todd Gitlin, a professor of culture, journalism and sociology at New York University. ''If anyone tells you why, don't believe them. No one knows. Why was it hula hoops? Why was it Monopoly? Why was it Babe Ruth? Why was it yo-yos? It just is.'' But, however it evolved, it is clear the Pokemon phenomenon reflects the way modern communications and marketing are able to lift a few products into the economic stratosphere. There are literally thousands of things trying to become the craze of the moment, said Robert Frank, an economics professor at Cornell University's Johnson Graduate School of Management. ''Naturally, all can't succeed. There are lots of things just as good as Pokemon that don't make it. It has to have something intrinsically engaging.'' Both professors agreed that once an interest in Pokemon took root, it evolved from a children's craze into a financial one. This is all pure economics now, Professor Gitlin said. Once there's demand, there's money, and once there's money there's counterfeiting. Since Pokemon was introduced to America in September 1998 simply as a video game, Nintendo of America has licensed 90 Pokemon-related products, from playing cards and their 150 Pokemon characters, to toys, hats, T-shirts, plastic figurines, sheets and paper goods, said Beth Llewelyn, a Nintendo spokeswoman. Bogus goods started popping up in May, and Nintendo began an aggressive counterattack against counterfeiters, hiring private detectives and teaching United States Customs officers how to detect black-market packaging and shipping documents, Ms. Llewelyn said. Of the estimated $20 million in counterfeit goods seized in the last seven months, $10 million worth was confiscated last summer in a wholesale warehouse in Los Angeles, she said. The other $10 million, including plush dolls and toys, figurines, hats and T-shirts, cards and stickers, was seized in recent months in stores in Lower Manhattan, on the shipping docks of Elizabeth, N.J., and at stores in Honolulu, San Francisco, Toronto and Vancouver, British Columbia. The estimated $1 million in bogus cards seized in Hackensack on Tuesday was the largest amount found in a single raid, she said. Thousands of sheets of cards, each with 54 cards, were found in three vans detectives stopped at a warehouse here and in two warehouses in neighboring Little Ferry. Hackensack's police chief, Charles K. Zisa, said the three warehouses contained pallets and pallets of additional sheets of cards ready for shipping. The cards were printed by sophisticated computer and imaging machines and cut in the warehouses, Chief Zisa said. He said detectives are now trying to learn where the cards were to be packaged and distributed. Of the 150 Pokemon characters depicted on the playing cards, a few are rare, or premium, characters, like one named Charizard. Dr. Frank said the scarcity helps fuel the demand for them and explains why children pressure parents to buy them the cards, which come in packs of 10 or 11 and sell for $5 to $8. Coveting the prize possession is an age-old story in human nature, he said. ''The company decides how hard it is to find the rare card. If you could get any Pokemon card you wanted, there'd be no market.'' That might help explain, he said, the 9-year-old boy hiding in the Bridgeport store and then trying to steal the 44 packs. After the boy, who is about 4 feet tall, called 911 from inside the locked store, officers found him sitting on a shelf, dangling his legs over the side. The boy was charged with juvenile delinquency and then released to his great-grandmother. The squabble over the swastikalike symbol on the Japanese language cards seems to stem, too, from excessive demand. The symbol that drew objections is a manji, a sign of hope in Japan and a fixture on many Buddhist temples long before the Nazis adopted the swastika. Cards with a manji were supposed to be distributed only in Japan but reached the United States through a gray market for Pokemon products, Ms. Llewelyn said. Different from bogus or black-market goods, the gray market products are licensed for sale only in one country, in this case Japan, but are purchased there by legitimate companies and distributors and then resold in the United States, she said. To prevent any further cultural misunderstandings, the symbol will no longer be printed on Japanese-language cards, she said. It's a lot to make of a bunch of cards. But Neal Gabler, cultural historian and author of Life the Movie: How Entertainment Conquered Reality, said in a culture obsessed by celebrity, Pokemon has been turned into a kind of fire, a conflagration, and children have been caught up in it. The kids get caught up in the fire themselves -- you have to have the cards, you have to have the toys, Mr. Gabler said. ''It even becomes a bizarre form of material-based community, a community based on cards and toys. Not to become part of it is to be marginalized. No one wants to be marginalized, or out of the loop.''

This article futher expresses how Pokemon has affected the youth. Many kids became obsessed with Pokemon and it also had a very negative effect on children as well as just being a fun video game. Pokemon, in many children's minds became a figment of reality and the real world and became ingrained into their minds so much that they needed it.