>>58056559To be fair, the licensing was a mess because they genuinely were not prepared for just HOW big it got or how quickly. TPC didn't exist until about gen 3. The merch companies probably had defacto license for [product category] (in this case anime cards) rather than having to get individual products approved and adhere to NDAs. There was no way in hell every official product got reviewed ahead of release like it does now and being first with new pokemon meant massive sales so they probably rushed to market with what they had been given/shown as a business partner or sent someone to Japan to get stuff well before localization was finished.
I remember late summer/early fall 1998 I was watching Mystic Knights of Tir Na Nog and playing with my Rohan and Princess Deirdre figures, then a couple months later my whole life was pokemon. I wanted nothing more in the world than a gameboy and some cards, everything I ate came with a pokemon variety of some kind be that cereal or fruit by the foot or chicken nuggets, half my wardrobe had pikachu on it by time school started up again in 1999, everyone was having pretend pokemon battles on the playground, older kids snuck their gameboys and link cables well after schools started banning them and eventually anything pokemon because they were a constant distraction in class and causing fights over stuff getting stolen/traded at recess well beyond the occasional bully asking to play with something and not giving it back later. My local radio station had a daily call-in who's that pokemon contest where the dj would describe a pokemon and one lucky caller with the right answer would win some merch. No other fad since took off like pokemon, it reached modern Disney catalogue levels of popularity over night. The only way it could have been bigger is if the internet was more like it is now so more people could have known about it sooner. It was truly out of anyone's control.
