“We can gracefully and gratefully partake in another’s nostalgia... If they relate it well, we can let their nostalgia, for a moment, become our nostalgia.” -Action Button Reviews Boku no Nasuyasumi
Nostalgic Summers Before My Time
PokéMania
The original 151 are everywhere, and Gold and Silver are just on the horizon!
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"I don’t mean to get all “90s kid” on everyone, but it just occurred to me that there are now a sizable number of people on the internet who don’t remember what it was like when Pokemon was everywhere.
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Like, obviously Pokemon is still very popular, but I mean it was everywhere. Back in the late 90s/early 2000s there was not a single goddamn square foot of human civilization that didn’t have Pokemon on it.
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You could wake up in the morning, slide out from under your Pokemon blanket, and go to the kitchen to eat some Pokemon marshmallow cereal and a Pokemon pop-tart. Then you get driven to school while listening to the Pokemon soundtrack CD your parents have very graciously allowed you to play in the car for the past three months.
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It’s classtime. You’re doodling pictures of Pokemon inside your Pokemon notebook. You crush the lead on your Pokemon pencil with the Pokemon pencil topper, so you borrow a Pokemon pencil sharpener from your friend, who pulls it out of her Pokemon backpack with Pokemon keychains on it.
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Time for lunch. Your lunchbox? Pokemon, of course, though you can hardly see it underneath all the Pokemon stickers you’ve plastered over it. Inside you find a Pokemon fruit roll-up, a pb&j sandwich made with jelly from a collectible Pokemon jelly jar, and a box of apple juice. (The apple juice is not Pokemon-themed, but your mother has drawn a crude approximation of a Bulbasaur on it, because she loves you.)
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Then recess, glorious recess. Half the kids run around the playground, pretending to either be wild Pokemon or Team Rocket members. The other half bring out their Pokemon cards. Anyone who hasn’t brought their own alternates between discussing Pokemon card strategy and how excited they are for the upcoming Pokemon movie (so excited.) Somewhere in the back of your mind you notice Kevin isn’t here, but rumor is he managed to smuggle in an entire Game Boy and is hiding in the middle of the playground structure.
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School’s out. You read your Pokemon Handbook in the car on the way to get some after-school fast food, with which you get one of an astounding number of Pokemon toys. Back home, you watch one of your favorite Pokemon episodes on tape (they’re all your favorite) and color in your Pokemon coloring book. Your parents, sophisticated adults that they are, read the lastest issue of Time magazine - which has a Pokemon cover story.
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Then you have Pokemon-shaped macaroni and cheese for dinner, brush your teeth with a Pokemon toothbrush, and cuddle your Pokemon stuffed animals as you fall asleep.
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POKEMON."
As a late 2000s kid, Pokemon loomed large in my childhood as well. I love Pokemon and have always been interested in Pokemania, it almost feels like a legend to me, haha!
"Pokemon anything sells like hotcakes. Pokemon shirts, Pokemon potato chips, Pokemon airsoft guns, Pokemon air. Anything Pokemon is like a wildfire of money."
Digimon Adventure, 1999
"It was meant to capture our imaginations and let them run wild. Heck, I remember swiping the card on the Digimon D-Power Digivice my parents bought me... hoping that I would wake up the next day a Digimon Tamer."
I watched this series for the first time as an adult, and it made me feel like a kid. I would have loved it back then as much as I do now! The 8th child arc is especially memorable.
“We talked about summers memorable and lazy, fictional and real, Japanese and non-Japanese. His, and mine.” -Action Button Reviews Boku no Nasuyasumi