Wanted to share some older TCG & Non-TCG related commercials that aired in Japan between 1997 and 2005. Although I did not grow up watching these commercials, there is an element of nostalgia tied to each video - besides who doesn't love some outdated CGI. Enojy!
TCG / TCG-related
1997
April Commercial (Base & Jungle)
December Commercial (Team Rocket)
1998
April through August (Same sets as before, short crimp packs are still shown)
This one is actually for the VHS “Can You Say The Pokémon? Can You Draw Pokémon?” (not sure if it shows any TCG cards) and features Imakuni dancing
1999
January - Pokémon Song Best Collection (briefly shows the CD promos)
September Commercial (Shows Gym sets)
2000
February - Neo 1
2001
July - VS
2003
July - Rulers of the Heavens (EX Dragon) & Half decks
2004
March - Flight of Legends (FRLG)
July - Clash of the blue sky (EX Deoxys)
2005
April - Golden Sky, Silvery Ocean (EX Unseen Forces)
July - Mirage Forest & Mew Master Kit (EX Legend Maker)
July - McDonalds PCG-P
October - Holon Research Tower (EX Delta Species)
Non-TCG
1997 - Shogakukan Commercial (This one might be my favorite )
This playlist might be useful for you (made and uploaded by “GCMC:ゲームCMコレクター”
This playlist has videos of commercials separed per year …
It’s extremely useful since it has the E4 Split Earth commercial and is the only place I could find it.
E4 Split Earth commercial
And I didn’t know E3 Wind from the Sea commercial has like 3 different versions …
E2 and E3 have more than 1 commercial. The other expansions seems to have only 1 or if there’re other commercial variants, they are probably Lost Media …
Expansions from E2 to E5 have very similar commercials … It’s like they’re all connected in a same map due to the commercials start pointing a direction
E2: East
E3: South
E4: West
E5: North
Yes, they focus on some specific cards with cool animations …
The Porygon episode was apparently not the first time, pokemon caused seizures.
It’s funny how 90s these are.
edit: BTW, Great shares everyone! Really cool stuff, outside of the nostalgia. It’s interesting to see little pieces of the past and future, AR cards, IRL player interaction then vs now, etc…
That’s interesting you mention the porygon episode. It aired on December 16th, 1997, and the incident, referred to ポケモンショック Pokemon Shokku, caused the anime to postpone episodes for four months until mid April. Looking at the list above, it looks like Media Factory did not release any commercials during those four months, definitely a sensitive issue.
yea, that’s me, back when I lived in japan in the 90s. I think I was 8 when this was made. I didn’t know anything about Pokémon at the time, so this was my first experience with it.
I don’t think I met any employees, just people from the media company doing the shoot. They gave me quite a few packs that I opened on the way home in the subway, and I remember I got a holo Charizard (which my brother later stole and sold for star wars cards). I remember they told us to make faces of the Pokémon that were going to be on screen. The other kid in the commercial knew all the Pokémon, so his faces might make more sense. I was just winging it, which is why mine were random. They also let us play red/green on Gameboy while we were waiting for the shoot, it was all in Japanese though, so I wasn’t very good at it. I was basically doing things at random and hoping for the best.
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