>>10007587I don't get this argument though, like of course Yugioh is going to have more cultural osmosis with people in their 20s/30s because they're the ones who grew up with Yugioh on television, and it had more going for it than just a card game (Manga, Toys that were on shelf alongside the show, spinoffs like Dungeon Dice Monsters). If Pokemon wasn't a thing Yugioh would probably have been the #1 thing on the playground during the early 2000s.
Magic does have "Iconic" creatures/characters; your Avacyns, your Snapcaster Mages, your Garys, your Shivan Dragons, your Tarmogoyfs, and so on. The thing is that while these are easily identifiable to any Magic player right away yet they don't have the same recognizability as Dark Magician or Blue Eyes White Dragon because they didn't show up on Kids WB every afternoon after school. All of magic's fiction at the time was relegated to either novels or the cards themselves.
The only commonly recognized card from people outside of Magic is Black Lotus, and only because people go "Oh hey it's that card that's worth like $100,000". Show somebody Hitotsu-me Giant or Wall Shadow or any of the innocuous one-of monsters that show up in Yugioh S1 that aren't any of Yugi's monsters (Dark Magician, Summoned Skull, Kuriboh, etc), Red Eyes Black Dragon, Harpy Lady, Blue Eyes White/Ultimate Dragon, or Relinquished and most people won't remember them because people only recall the main characters' main cards.
If there was a Magic show in the late 90s/00s (Let's say it covered the Weatherlight Saga since that was relevant at the time) you'd have people that remembered Gerrard or Sisay or Karn or Squee or Ertai just as much as you have people remember Yugi or Mai or Kaiba or Joey or Pegasus.
Until that Netflix show comes out of development hell or they announce an adaptation of Destroy all Humankind, They Can't be Regenerated magic is stuck in its old ways of storytelling through cards and poorly written web prose.
