>>58135443You kind of summed the situation up with the greentext.
Pokemon's star faded because everyone had been convinced it was a fad all along, and there was a weird convergence of events all at the same time.
Wizards in particular had already alienated fans with the Neo Slowking mistranslation, trying to remove senior tournaments (because they wanted teens on Magic) and reintroducing degenerate cards in Legendary. It was always a quick buck and MtG ramp for them, but it got very blatant.
And it wasn't just teens who got into more "mature" games at the time, that early 2000s/post-9/11 darkness bled into everything. I was born in 1996 and can clearly remember that by 2004 my peers had all abandoned kiddy shit, because of the proliferation of edge: Linkin Park, Halo, GTA, Eminem, ICP, South Park and raunchy movies became the thing to talk about.
No longer could I mention Pokemon, even Yu-Gi-Oh was seen as kinda gay. Star Wars was for fags unless you defended it by saying you only like the video games (Battlefront). Bionicle was for fags. Sonic was retarded but at least Shadow the Hedgehog was cool. SpongeBob was for babies. Dragon Ball GT was cool and Z was for fags. It was that kind of attitude permating everything. Pokemon went from a series for 12 and under to a series for kindergartners.
But like the first long post here said, it's impressive that TPC/Ishihara saw the change coming ahead of time. Flagging sales with Crystal version pushed them to try and consolidate the brand from it's many licensees so that nobody would try and milk the fuck out of the cash cow with the fad ending.
MediaFactory was the first domino to fall, those "new back" cards started with Creatures' first set, VS, to signal a new era for the game and franchise. Pokemon USA established the same year.
Because they were able to control the merchandising during the mid00s, TPC played close to the vest and focused on the core business of game sales for the new 5 year olds born every day.
