At the beginning of the franchise several models of the Pokédex were marketed in toy form.
The original Pokédex in the Pokémon anime
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Although the Pokémon franchise is still today one of the most profitable in the world, we can see that in its beginnings, in what became known as pokemon feverthis was quite a social phenomenon, which caused, for obvious reasons, those responsible for it to want to exploit it in all possible areas, which gave rise to some products such as the collectible card game that continues to be launched today new expansions.
Now, within all the products derived from video games and anime, we could see how it was launched even a replica of Ash’s Pokédex, which was an electronic toy that essentially allowed you to know the descriptions seen in video games, thus allowing you to learn more about the first 151 Pokémon through the introduction of their names. Now, despite everything, it seems that Nintendo didn’t want it to go to marketwhile the reasons for making this decision (which was not finally carried out) have recently been revealed.
Nintendo feared that the Pokédex would take sales away from Pokémon games
Under this premise we have been able to learn through an interview with Chris Nicolella, former senior producer of Hasbro and Tiger, that Nintendo did not want the Pokédex to be released as electronic toys to the market, whereas the reason for this was because they thought that would affect the sales of Pokémon Game Boy gamesbeing this something that did not make much sense in view of the fact that the Pokédex was not a portable console and it had no way of competing with what the Pokémon games had to offer.
In fact, one of the great obstacles that Nintendo put was the limitations on animations, being so that these came to have only two frames because Nintendo did everything possible so that it did not come close to what was seen in the games. And even with those, these were eventually eliminated by something much simpler that was put together by people from Nintendo Japan directly.
Very interesting interview w/ producer who worked on the very first electronic Pokédex toy model! Turns out it almost never made it to market! Make sure to follow @johtotimes and SUBSCRIBE to their newsletter, even more insights from the early days of Pokémon and its fanbase are… https://t.co/amMIvkTJaO pic.twitter.com/cVvL72ItVF
— PokéJungle: Gen IX (@pokejungle) April 13, 2023
For the rest, it seems that over time Nintendo have been more open to opening their franchises to other marketssince ultimately we can see that, on the one hand, Pokémon has expanded into other areaswhile, in fact, Pokémon GO has brought about a revolution that has been accompanied by various devices to improve the gaming experience, in the same way that other Nintendo licenses have also made the leap to other media, being the example more recent the Super Mario Bros movie with Illumination. In fact, at the time of writing these lines, the film is already the 24th highest grossing in history and the highest grossing this year.
On the other hand, in the event that you are interested in everything that has to do with Pokémon, know that although there are no plans to launch new Pokédexes on the market as a toy, since, in a certain sense, Pokémon HOME replaces these are currently under development pokemon scarlet and purple expansion pass, which will arrive in two batches that will be launched in the fall and winter of this year. In the same way, do not forget that there is currently a Teraincursion event with Chesnaught as the protagonist, although it will only be for a limited time.
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