I Was There For The '90s Pokémon Card Craze & Can Tell You Exactly What It Was Like

When the first launched in the 1990s, it may not have been a guaranteed success. Even with how popular the franchise was becoming in the United States, was in its infancy and baseball cards were arguably the TCG to beat. Times have certainly changed, but almost thirty years later, it's hard to describe just how wild collecting cards was in the '90s. Even with the more recent spike that started in 2020, the first craze was one for the ages.

I was in fourth grade when Poké mania seemed to hit my corner of the country. The local TV station played episodes of the anime in the mornings before we caught the bus, people would bring their games inside Game Boys and GBCs to school to try to trade and evolve their precious Pokémon, and the shelves at my local Walmart were lined with TOMY action figures. But it was cards that finally seemed to seal the deal with the franchise's popularity, and soon, it seemed like every kid at my school was trading them on the playground and battling during lunch.

Initially, it didn't seem like cards were all that hard to find. Sometime between the and sets of the TCG, though, it felt like buying even a single booster pack required a lot of luck and standing in line. I lived in a small town and the only place that carried cards was Walmart. Somehow, people would get wind of new cards arriving. We'd stand in line outside the electronics section, sometimes for 30 minutes or more, where it was limited to one booster pack per person.

If you were really lucky, your parents might drive you 45 minutes away to the Toys «R „Us where there was a chance the inventory there would be higher, and the selection would be wider. At one point, I lucked into getting the and felt like Indiana Jones getting ahold of the Holy Grail. In fact, of all the sets that have released since, it's the one I always think about — the earthy-brown box with the giant Poké Ball and Ken Sugimori's Aerodactyl on the front. It's still vivid in my mind, and I could kick my younger