>>50820354It's not really a fad anymore, but the whole point of a fad is that it doesn't last forever. People back then thought Pokémon wouldn't survive past the Gameboy era, and they've been proven wrong. Pokémon is still extremely popular. It was inspired by things like Godzilla, Ultraseven, Dragon Quest, Doraemon, and Hello Kitty. All of those are also consistently popular, or having a resurgence of popularity, in Japan and worldwide. The closest thing zoomers have to Pokémania is the MCU, but that has both the Internet and a ton of Disney money being thrown at it. Game Freak was literally a small indie company in the 1990's. Pokémania was almost entirely word-of-mouth among kids in the pre-Internet era. The only official promotion the games and cards got in the West was the anime. Pretty much everything else with the Pokémon brand on it from that time period was a third-party licensed product. The popularity was entirely organic. There were no such things as astroturfed shills or "influencers" back then. The Western equivalent in popularity from that same time period is Spongebob Squarepants. Spongebob is still really popular globally, but he's not a fad anymore either.
