They pass the torch to their children
“Good choice boy!” one of the video’s 2.2 million viewers responded to TikTok.
“It’s not the one I would have chosen,” Bridges later said in an interview with The Post. (He would have chosen Bulbasaur). “But we will love and support him no matter what.”
Parents often record the firsts of their lives. A baby’s first steps, a child’s first bike ride, a teenager’s first dance. But recently, some couples have come to appreciate something new: their child’s first Pokémon. It’s a recreation of a rite of passage from the franchise, in which players must choose one of three starter Pokémon before embarking on their journey.
The 26-year-old Pokémon franchise is one of the most profitable media franchises in the world, alongside Hello Kitty and Mickey Mouse. And the kids who grew up catching Pokémon are now parents.
“We’ll be able to talk at length about what his favorite Pokémon is,” Bridges said of Finn. “We’re one of the first generations where that’s very possible, and probably a bit more normal, for adult-child video game or media sharing.”
The Pokémon Company International, which is responsible for managing the Pokémon brand outside of Asia, fully recognizes that the fan base for the franchise now spans generations, even from grandparents to grandchildren. Torrie Dorrell, the company’s vice president of marketing for the company, said she loves watching parents pass the baton to their children — adding that the company is “really just getting started” with how it wants all of these audiences. operate.
“We’re just continuing to diversify our offerings,” Dorrell said, without providing details. “Obviously we can’t say too much about our future and what we’re going to do, but we’re definitely seeing it. We have not missed it.”
Randy and Stephanie Timmerman filmed their daughter picking her starter Pokemon and posted the video to TikTok in March — not to go viral, but just to capture the moment. “Because it’s cute,” Stephanie said.
For Randy, a pastor who lives on the East Coast of Virginia, parents have always wanted to show their children the hobbies they are passionate about. For him, it’s Pokemon. For his father, it is a love of fishing.
“I love fishing to this day, especially when it comes to side-by-side with my dad,” Randy said. “It doesn’t matter if our daughter ends up being a Pokémon nerd like me or us. The point is that we contact her in this way.”
When Pokémon first came to North America in the late 1990s, the franchise was a ubiquitous form of children’s entertainment: a television show, trading cards, and a video game all at once. Brandon Stell, a 32-year-old mechanic who lives in Hinesville, Georgia, remembers seeing the first movie in the theater, collecting the cards with his friends, and going to Burger King to get all the plastic toy samples.
For Stell, video games have been a regular part of his life. It all started when his father found an original gray Game Boy with a version of the first Pokémon game while cleaning up a car one day at work. Stell said his family didn’t have much money growing up and that his father was an alcoholic who was “in and out of the picture”. The game became an escape.
“My brother and I just went into the bedroom, got out the Game Boy, and hid to play Pokémon together,” Stell said. “It’s still a form of escapism for me.”
Years later, in high school, Stell biked to his girlfriend Kimberly’s house so the two could play “Pokémon Sapphire,” a Game Boy Advance sequel. And she often beat him with a “level 100 Dodrio,” a three-headed ostrich who has a one-hit move called “Tri Attack.”
“This was high school, mind you, so we were thinking about other things,” Stell said. “But all we did when we got there was she got out her Game Boy and I got my Game Boy.”
The two are now married and have five children. Stell recalls when they first started talking about building a family together. Eventually, he thought, he would be able to introduce his children to the world of Pokémon. And he did. Once or twice a week, Stell plays the trading card game with his 9-year-old daughter, Venasera.
“As corny as it sounds, it was one of the things I really looked forward to about having kids,” Stell said. “Being able to share not only Pokémon, but all my interests.”
Natasha Vadori-Canini, a mother of two living near Toronto, revisits the original animated series with her four-year-old son Jonathan. Vadori-Canini told The Post that the show is better than what’s out there today, like Peppa Pig or Caillou. When she was a kid, Vadori-Canini remembers running home from school to watch the last episode. She didn’t have tapes or DVR at the time, so either she caught the episode live or missed it, she said.
The animated series attracted a furore from fans and critics alike when it was first released. In 1997, hundreds of children were hospitalized in Japan after they reportedly experienced seizures and other symptoms while watching a scene from the show. It is estimated that 55 percent of primary and secondary school children in Tokyo watched the show that night.
But it wasn’t just any weird TV night. The franchise has a long history of fueling moral panic. Educators banned the playing card game from school grounds after a reported spate of robberies, fights and a stabbing in Quebec over the cards. To allay Catholic parents’ concerns, the Vatican said the Pokémon franchise’s first film, released in 1999, has no “harmful moral side effects” on children.
Nearly two decades later, “Pokémon Go,” the mobile game that uses augmented reality to place monsters in real-world locations, became an international sensation. It’s been six years since the title was released and “Pokémon Go” is still one of the most popular mobile games to download. At the height of the coronavirus pandemic, fans clamored for the trading cards again; players camped in rows outside stores to buy packs. Target eventually suspended sales of the cards, citing security concerns.
As a kid growing up outside of Seattle, Douglas Haines rarely played with Pokémon cards. He remembers that his predecessor brought a small barbecue to Sunday school where children could burn their trading cards. The Church’s way of seeing it: “Pokémon evolved and evolution was bad,” Haines said. The collectible cards fit in the same forbidden bucket as Harry Potter and Dungeons & Dragons. As a substitute for the Pokémon cards, the church offered biblical trading cards depicting scenes such as Daniel in the lion’s den, Haines said.
“I can’t imagine how many thousands of dollars worth of rare Charizard holographic images were burned that day in the 1990s,” said Haines, 35. “I cry now just thinking about it.”
Two decades later, Haines is the father of four children and a film producer in Las Vegas. To be Six-year-old son Max wakes his father up “almost every morning” to play with Pokémon cards on the floor of his bedroom. Haines said a booster pack of Pokémon cards and a trip to McDonalds is a “huge deal” for Max, and it’s easy for him to take his son on a whim.
“When I’m an adult, I like Pokémon more because I can connect with him at that level,” Haines said. “Five dollars for a Pokémon booster pack is nothing.”
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