Thirty years. Three decades of catching 'em all, and somehow I still can't find my original Game Boy charger.
Yes, Pokemon officially hits the big 3-0 this year, which means the franchise that launched a thousand playground fights over holographic Charizard cards is now old enough to rent a car. And if you're a millennial who just felt your lower back twinge while reading that sentence, congratulations — you're exactly who The Pokemon Company is coming for.
Nintendo and friends have been teasing anniversary celebrations all year, and the internet collectively lost its mind when a grainy "leak" claiming a remake of the Johto region started circulating. Never mind that half these leaks are just some guy in a basement with Photoshop and too much free time. We want to believe. We need to believe. Because nothing numbs the existential dread of a 401(k) quite like a $60 nostalgia trip.
Let's do the math, shall we? Pokemon Red and Green dropped in Japan on February 27, 1996. That means an entire generation of kids who begged their parents for a Game Boy Link Cable are now adults who beg their bosses for PTO. We went from "Mom, can I get Pokemon Yellow?" to "Honey, can I expense this Master Ball hoodie as a business expense?" The answer is no, by the way. I checked.
The anniversary merch is, predictably, out of control. Limited edition plushies. Commemorative cards that will immediately be scalped by bots and relisted on eBay for the price of a used sedan. A special anniversary Switch bundle that sold out in 4.7 seconds, presumably to the same three guys who bought up every PS5 in 2020. It's the circle of life, but with more cardboard and worse financial decisions.
And here's the thing nobody wants to admit: the franchise is basically immortal at this point. It's the highest-grossing media franchise of all time — roughly $100 billion, which is enough money to buy a small country, or at least fund a decent healthcare system for a couple of weeks. Pikachu is more recognizable than most world leaders. Ash Ketchum finally became a champion, retired, and got replaced by a new protagonist, which was basically the franchise's way of saying "we're done pretending you're the target audience, grandpa."
Yet here we are anyway. Watching the anniversary livestream. Wiping away a single tear during the Kanto theme. Explaining to our kids why the original 151 were objectively the best and that everything after Gen 3 is, quote, "a slippery slope." They don't care. They're playing whatever free-to-start mobile gacha nonsense is trending this week. We've become our parents, shaking our fists at the newfangled Digimon. Wait, wrong franchise. You get the point.
The anniversary also reminds us that we've spent cumulative months of our lives wandering through tall grass, breeding perfect IVs, and soft-resetting for shiny legendaries. Time well spent? Debatable. Would we do it again? Absolutely. That's the cursed bargain of being a Pokemon fan. It never lets you go, and you never really want it to.
So happy 30th, Pokemon. Thanks for the childhood memories, the questionable sleep schedules, and the lingering suspicion that every dog you meet could theoretically learn Thunderbolt. Here's to 30 more years of pretending we're only buying this merch for our kids.
Anyway, I've got to go. There's a new anniversary event going live and I need to catch a shiny version of a Pokemon I've already caught forty times. Priorities.
*Final thought: Thirty years later and Game Freak still hasn't fixed the frame rate, but we keep buying anyway. That's not a fanbase, that's a hostage situation with extra steps. Happy anniversary, you beautiful disaster.*