[freetime2]

My kids never had any interest in Labubu, but have been caught up in other fads like Pokemon cards. My sense is that these kinds of trends are mostly driven by scarcity. If you manage to get your hands on one, then you get the feeling of owning something rare, exclusive, and desirable amongst your peers - which is enough reason on its own to want something. You can also convince yourself that paying the normal MSRP is a smart buy, since normally they are sold by scalpers at inflated prices, even if you have no intention of reselling.

I’m not immune either. They sell Pokemon cards at 7/11 here - typically a store will put out one or two boxes a day - and usually they sell out very quickly. When I see them in stock, I feel an urge to buy them even when I’m not with my kids. Just because I know they will sell out soon.

[parpfish]

from what i remember about toy trends as a kid, it wasn't about wanting to have the thing. it was about not wanting to be the one that didn't have the thing.

[prettyblocks]

Mostly yes, but I think it's both, because some people become life long fans, like the adult Pokemon card collectors.

[teaearlgraycold]

All of these gambling box toys are a way to simulate a reality where you can actually afford meaningful and expensive things - like real estate, nice cars, etc. When those are entirely out of budget for someone they might cope with a $30 toy they purchased for $200, which then can get milked by installing onto your belt.

[HoldOnAMinute]

I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time.

[doctorpangloss]

Haha what would Pokémon have to do to convince you it's more than a fad? It's already the world's biggest IP, it's been around for 30 years...

[freetime2]

I’m referring specifically to the cards, which exploded in popularity after Logan Paul paid $5 million for a rare card in 2021.

The prices are completely driven by artificial scarcity - obviously they could easily print any card in unlimited numbers, but they intentionally print some cards in limited quantities that can only be obtained by getting lucky with a random pack.

Most buyers don’t even play the card game.

In February Paul resold the card for $16 million. [1]

[1] https://edition.cnn.com/2026/02/16/americas/pokemon-card-log...

[john_strinlai]

>I’m referring specifically to the cards, which exploded in popularity after Logan Paul paid $5 million for a rare card in 2021.

the cards have been popular for significantly longer than 5 years.

my kid's entire class (the entire school, really) brought their binders of pokemon cards to school every day in ~2002 until the school banned pokemon cards on premise because they were such a distraction and causing issues (kids crying about unfair trades, etc.)

[freetime2]

They have long been popular, but the popularity has increased more than 5x since the pandemic. They were printing less than 2 billion a year before then [1], and are now selling more than 10 billion a year despite shortages, scalping, etc [2].

Perhaps "boom" is a better word for it than "fad". But my point is just that this demand seems to be largely driven by artifical scarcity, speculation, influencers - similar to Labubu.

And eventually prices will hit a peak and I expect we will see demand fall off rapidly.

[1] https://www.pokebeach.com/2021/06/pokemon-tcg-sold-3-7-billi...

[2] https://www.ign.com/articles/10-billion-pokemon-cards-were-p...

[doctorpangloss]

Can you really say they're scarce if they're printing 5x as many, by your own words?

Look I agree with you, kids find YouTube videos about really compelling IP really compelling! But that is the story, with Pokémon cards and Labubu. Artificial scarcity, which a bajillion games try to do, most of them failing, doesn't alone move the needle on appeal. It's basically meaningless as a design choice. That's what you mean by artificial, the perception of scarcity, maybe, which everything collectible tries to do, and to me, is not really why kids find it appealing or care of whatever.

It's just the part of the product that you understand. That is what I am trying to say. You don't know why they find Pokémon appealing. You have no idea. You understand the gacha part but it doesn't really matter. It's easier to see this when you try playing really popular Roblox games, it really hits you how poorly you understand appeal.

[freetime2]

> Can you really say they're scarce if they're printing 5x as many, by your own words?

All the local stores that sell random packs of Pokemon cards are sold out. So is Amazon, etc. If I wanted to buy some right now, the only way I could do it is through scalpers. So yes - they are scarce.

I think The Pokemon Company is very intentional about how many cards they print. As many as possible without saturating the market. I'm sure they employ people with degrees in business and economics whose job it is to figure that out.

> You don't know why they find Pokémon appealing.

That's not true. I like Pokemon. I have a Pokemon sticker on my laptop. I understand that there is intrinsic value to a Pokemon game, figurine, and even a cool holographic trading card. But the reason people are buying random packs from scalpers which usually just contain worthless junk cards is the hope of scoring a rare card. It's the scarcity.

That's also the reason they are sold that way instead of just selling you the cards you want as singles. If I could just go out and buy any special art card for $100 direct from The Pokemon Company (a huge margin for them), it would completely tank prices and ultimately demand.

[Veserv]

Their popularity is a fad. You are talking about their popularity when they first released in the US. They faded significantly for at least a decade if not two until seeing a recent resurgence so massive even random corner stores carry pokemon card packs these days.

[Gigachad]

What gets me is that no one actually plays the game or cares about the cards. They buy them purely to resell them to someone else later for more. It's just like crypto in physical form.

[freetime2]

When my kids open a pack they usually don't even look at what cards they get. They spread them out just enough to see the border - which is enough to tell whether you've gotten a rare card or not. I'm sure they've thrown plenty of cards in the junk bin without ever once looking at them.

The "special art rare" ones are admittedly pretty cool, and those do get taken out and looked at from time to time. Usually when friends come over.

[buildbot]

This was true over 20 years ago when I was in elementary school - I don’t know anyone who really played the game, most people just collected the cards.

Magic the Gathering was always both though, you collected good/rare cards & played the game with them!

[resonious]

Yes I remember having a hard time finding other kids who wanted to actually play the pokemon card game. And even when I could find someone, they didn't care about the rules/energy costs. This was in elementary school though to be fair.

[cptroot]

I recently watched an excellent video about that incident. [1]

The takeaway was that this was yet another move by rich assholes designed to siphon money from the pockets of small time gamblers just so that the rich could get richer. They did it to Pokemon cards, destroying the experience of playing the actual game, and they tried to do it to Manga (although they hopefully won't succeed there).

[1] https://youtu.be/W2x-UQpiARc?si=eVwXhHAtD0keH2ON

[dvt]

> I’m referring specifically to the cards, which exploded in popularity after some YouTuber paid millions for a rare card

Objectively untrue boomer take. Pokemon cards have been popular & have been traded since I was in middle school and I'm 40 now lol. Even without ever collecting them I know how cool having a Holo Charizard was.

[freetime2]

If you look at Google Trends you can see that interest in Pokemon Cards was mostly flat until 2021 when Logan Paul made headlines for spending $5m on a card. It spiked again in late 2024 and has remained high when they released an app for trading cards digitally.

Before 2019 they printed fewer than 2 billion cards per year [1]. Since 2021 they are printing 9 billion cards per year, and 12 billion in 2024 since they released the app. And release 7 new sets a year. And they are still selling out as soon as they hit store shelves [2].

The popularity you experienced in grade school is nothing like the revenous demand today. I suspect you might be the one who has fallen behind the times.

[1] https://www.pokebeach.com/2021/06/pokemon-tcg-sold-3-7-billi...

[2] https://www.ign.com/articles/10-billion-pokemon-cards-were-p...

[coldtea]

Well, they have all the characteristics of a fad (driven by imitation, viral adoption, unserious, novelty over substance) aside from short lifespan.

There are fad diets that have been around for 50 years after all...

[john_strinlai]

indeed, i always understood a "fad" to mean some short-lived trend. meanwhile, pokemon is probably around the same age as the average HN user.

[Gigachad]

Pokemon itself is not a trend but the current hype around the cards is and has only been around for a few years.

[alephnerd]

> probably around the same age as the average HN user.

Based on the references and speech patterns I've seen on HN, I think the average HNers is at least a decade older than Pokemon. The first Pokemon videogame only came out in 1996.

Y'all are boomers - nothing wrong with that, but HN has become an older monoculture.

[buildbot]

I don’t think this is true. HN was well known to CS people in my undergrad and I’m barely a millennial.

[alephnerd]

I'm roughly the same age (maybe a bit older) as you and frankly, we are middle age. Yet by HN standards we skew young.

[tredre3]

Do you have a source for that? I'm likely the same age as you are and I usually feel like people on HN don't swing that widely away from our age group, but based on vibes alone I would have put the median HN poster closer to 25-30 than to 50.

[Karrot_Kream]

Agree with this FWIW. The music and movie references here are largely from the 80s. Nostalgia here tends to be rooted in the 80s to the early 90s. This place feels solidly GenX to me which makes sense as the first web-forward generation.

[Nursie]

10 years older than pokemon isn’t even Gen X, it’s millennial…

[RedNifre]

They probably meant "Boomer" in the colloquial sense of "somewhat old person" like how "Boomer Shooters" are for GenX and older Millenials.

[pretzellogician]

Thanks! I didn't know that. That's... really unfortunate that the slang has gone that direction.

[john_strinlai]

>Y'all are boomers.

i am! but i see a fair amount of people just starting their careers, students, etc. as well. and, based on some of the comments ive seen, i think there is a lot of young folk. most of my students are active, or at least browse, HN. they are mostly 18-20.

i took a wild guess that ~30 would be the average. maybe 35-40 is closer. either way, i think my point stands: 30 years seems too long to be classified as a fad.

[alephnerd]

> i think my point stands: 30 years seems too long to be classified as a fad.

Yep! Completely agree! I'm not that much older than Pokemon, and most of my peers have been influenced by it heavily and their kids will be influenced by it as well. If Pokemon is a fad, so are smartphones.

In classic HN fashion, I decided to kvetch about something completely irrelevant to the larger convo ;)

[pretzellogician]

:-)

In that case, I'll kvetch about the "boomer" term (Baby Boomers are ~61+ years old), as I think you're conflating it with Generation X (45 - 61 years old)

[marssaxman]

People born in 1986 aren't even Gen-X, much less boomers: you are talking about millenials!

Even the youngest boomers are near retirement age now.