>>58138067>cont'dHaving control meant they could weather the storm of being "uncool" and figure out what to do right. Rather than desperate attempts to reboot and get big again, they were content to let Gen 3 play out, trusting that the games would be the key to the rest of the series even if they were popular to hate on. Eventually they got to a point where their first gen fans had grown up and gotten back into Pokemon for nostalgia, and they had also made a new generation of fans with Hoenn (this was the DP era). They basically took their lumps and learned from them -- VS was unplayable and e-Cards were a hated disaster, Ruby and Sapphire had to be rushed out, PCNY defaulted on rent and had to be rescued by Nintendo. From those, they learned to be a truly evergreen franchise.
In a weird way, Pokemon never went anywhere despite not being a seismic fad anymore. In Asia, there were the PokePark events, in the US we got Pokemon Rocks America for a few summers as well which were entire event tours in major cities. Then in 2006, despite it only being the anniversary for Japan, Pokemon Rocks became the 10th Anniversary tour which was even bigger, and they had events across Europe that time too.
Pikachu stayed in the Macy's parade and even got a new float in 2007! They flew that shit in Bryant Park in the middle of summer for their Party of the Decade!
So it was gay and you had to enjoy it in secret, but there were certainly legions of small kids and autists that openly displayed their love of the game even when it wasn't "cool" to do so.
