Grace Klich News Today

Making frustrating decisions in the face of myriad challenges, 2023 saw The Pokémon Company's image falter

Pokémon’s profit margins probably don’t reflect it, but the franchise had a rough year in 2023. Without a new mainline role-playing game to dominate the series’ headlines, Pikachu and friends were, instead, shrouded in controversies throughout the past 12 months. Between Pokémon Go angering swaths of its community, scalpers making a public embarrassment of the franchise to people who don’t even pay attention to it, and Scarlet and Violet’s DLC underli...

The Van Gogh Museum fiasco was a microcosm of what the Pokémon community has been dealing with for years

The story of how a dedicated Pokémon collector tracked down one of the rarest promotional items of the 90s -- a Pikachu-styled VW Beetle.

Only 22 of these Pikachu-inspired Volkswagen Beetles were made

In 1998, Nintendo was in the early years of promoting Pokémon while Game Freak’s monster-capturing phenomenon was making its way to the west after success in Japan. Part of that effort included repurposing 20 Volkswagen Beetle cars to look like Pikachu, the series’ adorable, electric mouse mascot, complete with pointed ears on the roof, red cheeks underneath the headlights, and the signature lightning bolt tail coming out of the trunk. These cars were used at events, traveled ...