What’s a Pokemon?
The news that broke a couple weeks ago regarding the collaboration of Lego and Pokemon was incredibly exciting to so many people….but not so much for me.
I know, I know, you are probably wondering, how can this be?? Let me explain…
As a Gen X’er, Pokémon came out when I was a young adult and therefore I had no interaction with the IP. I grew up in the 80's and early 90’s with Star Wars, Nintendo (8-bit, Gameboy, and Super Nintendo), Jurassic Park, and Batman. When Lego got into the aforementioned IP’s, as an adult, it was easy for me to jump in with both feet because I grew up loving the subject matter.
For example, I’ll never forget the day I discovered Lego was making Star Wars sets. I was shopping with my wife at Kohl’s and they had 7130 Snowspeeder on display. I bought it on the spot and built it that night. Prior to the Snowspeeder, I hadn't touched a Lego set in over 5 years, may have been longer. It was an immediate blast from the past when I saw the Lego Snowspeeder, as it reminded me of two of my favorite things as a child. As a young adult, careers and all the other grown up stuff we have to do, occupied most of my time and I continued on with my Lego Dark Age for another 10 years or so.
7130 Lego Star Wars Snowspeeder
I felt like a kid in a candy store when I saw this beauty on the shelf back in 1999
The time period mentioned above saw the creation of Pokemon and its exponential growth in popularity, all of it happening unbeknownst to me. I vaguely remember seeing various video game releases for the Nintendo systems but the franchise just didn't appeal to me.
I feel like there is a segment of the AFOL community that feels similarly. We understand the gravity of Lego and Pokemon coming together, we just don't understand the subject matter.
The Pokemon franchise is one of the highest grossing media IP’s in the world, like double the total global revenue of a certain huge Lego IP….Lucasfilms and Star Wars! According to Wikipedia, Pokemon has a total gross dollar amount of approximately $99 billion compared to “only” $47 billion with Star Wars. The most impressive part is the Pokemon franchise came into existence in 1996, compared to 1974 for Star Wars. Star Wars had a 22 year head start and still dwarfs the Pokemon franchise.
I am not going to attempt to explain Pokemon to those that are not familiar. I'll leave the explaining to those that have grown up with the franchise and know it intimately. Over the next year, I plan to research the theme so I can better understand the details and rumors that will inevitably be forthcoming.
If you’re like me, uneducated about Pokemon, does the Lego partnership intrigue you? Or are you OK to leave this collection alone? I can honestly say I don’t have an answer to that question. While I plan on leaning in to see what it's all about, I'm not sure I will be participating as a Lego collector. Only time will tell for me personally.
As always, I’d love to hear from you and your opinions on the Pokemon-Lego partnership. Are you like me and ignorant to all things Pokémon? Or do you love everything about it? Do you think Lego will do a better job than Mega Blocks?
That was a lot of questions, so I’m asking for your help to answer them, because I surely don’t have the answers. Leave a comment below
Until next time AFOL’s….