People keep lamenting how Gen 2/Gen 3/whatever killed Pokemania, but even aside from the fact that if anything other than the passage of time "killed" Pokemania it was the PS2 launching in 2000, I'd argue Pokemania dying was a good thing for the series as a whole- guaranteed success for a franchise based on hype breeds stagnation as the creators don't feel the need to innovate or even maintain quality standards because "it'll sell anyway". As we can see from the current state of the games- Pokemon sells because it's Pokemon just as it did back at the height of the fad, and the games are pretty fucking bad. In fact I'd argue had Pokemania continued GF would have become complacent quicker and the series would have ended on a pretty miserable note long ago.