>>48498391 Polanball is the 3nd biggest per-capita piratefag country in Europe, if youd include both Russia & Ukraine in the survey - no suprize that Ninty just didnt give a shit about this place before late-2000's when we joined EU and the NoE simply had to provide at least minimal customer support for us (imagine having to learn another language just to read the instruction manuals for your games/console prior to the Wii-era)
AFAIK the biggest fad related to pkmn was definetely the goddamn pogs/tazos from Lay's crisps packets, because most of the kids loaded enough to show-off buying the TCG cards simply didnt know how they work - due to studying English wasnt a mandatory subject for the youngest classes yet in the late 90's...
The anime was kinda big too, pretty much one of the first few fully professional-dubbed foreign productions, not just anime/cartoons in general (conciously omitting the real ancient shit like Moomins and MayaBee - most people didnt even realize those were made in Japan), in stark contrast to other shows like DBZ/SaintSeyia where it was just one monotonne guy doing a voiceover - all with a French import-dub audio playing in the background whenever he went silent for a moment...
There was at least one thread about this semi-bleak experience made earlier this year about this, might check the archive for copypasting it later
>Sorry for an unrelated pic, dont have anything else saved on my mobile ATM 