I went through my binder of 12 venomoths. All original print unfortunately. Now I want the variant
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Looks like venomoth is the normal version, makes sense since they were probably made contemporaneously, rather than later on with the revision.
I think those kanji(?) characters that look like backwards cococ, is corocoro magazine, so it was probably included in an issue(6?)
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My only regret is that, I have but one like to give.
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This is, hands down, the best E4 meme I’ve ever seen!
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Yes, that’s one of the bonus inserts from the June (month #6) 1996 issue of CoroCoro.
(Friendly clarification: コロコロ are not kanji characters, but rather katakana. Shameless self-promotion: I am the creator and co-author of “Kanji de Manga,”* a series of manga-themed books that teach how to read and write hiragana, katakana, and kanji. If you’re interested in learning some written Japanese, it’s a fun way to start!)
*Link opens in Amazon.
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I really like how the darker Charizard looks tbh.
Also, to not make 2 posts here, I have to say that the idea of short crimp Japanese packs has always interested me. If it were only base set packs that had it, you could conclude that they produced them originally, then had to change it once retailers requested hanger holes. This would also explain some having no rarity cards and some not, if the rarity issue was fixed first.
However, the fact that Jungle short crimps exist throws this theory out the window. It would make zero sense for the company to “fix” an issue, then reintroduce it. The timeline makes absolutely zero sense because jungle short crimps exist. I love and hate it at the same time.
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I get what you mean about the timeline not making sense, but I think the reason is that both early short pack Base and Jungle would have been made concurrently, and using the same packaging materials (they both have smaller short boxes as well).
Say Media Factory ordered 120,000 short foil wrappers and 2000 short boxes in April 1996 (6 months before Base was released). They start work on producing Base set and use up 2/3rds of the short wrapper and boxes and then think it’s a good idea to start early on Jungle with the remaining 1/3rd. They send out some Base promo/early release stuff to retailers, and they respond and ask for the hanger holes. Media Factory go ‘Ah. Ok.’ Then put in the next order for wrappers and boxes and that becomes what we see now as long/regular packs/boxes.
Also during that example, say after a couple months of production, they switch from printing the Base no rarity cards to the normal rarity cards, which is why the both can be found in short packs.
That’s how I could see it happening at least.
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Great thread! Early Pokemon history can be very mysterious. There are 5 different Jungle pack variants, with obviously the short packs being the most scarce.
Short packs are among the hardest Pokemon booster packs to find and it seems they were not produced for the wider market for any extended period. I would hypothesize and extra emphasis on hypothesize, that there was one print run of the short pack booster style. They would have been sold along Base at retail stores like Ito-Yokado in Booster boxes much like this:
(circa 1998 - so hanging holes weren’t vital to selling in stores)
It is possible that the short pack variants were sold like this up until the 6th Next Generation World Hobby Fair held in June 1997. Again, we could hypothesize that the short pack stock was depleted at this event given its size. Jungle was released March 1997, so that small time frame could explain the apparent shortage of short packs. More ancillary info from Pokemon Story to help gauge things:
From 20th October 1996 to the end of March 1997, total of 87 million cards were shipped
- 163 days total, includes 137* days of Base set and 26* days of Jungle
20 October 1996/20th October 1997 - In 1 year, approx. 180 million cards were shipped
- Includes Base set, Jungle and Fossil
Jungle Pack variants:
-
Short crimp
-
(291 yen) price variant
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(300 yen) price variant
-
(300 yen) price correction sticker
-
(300yen) barcode correction sticker
For booster packs with the price correction and barcode correction, Jungle booster boxes were actually resealed after the corrections were applied.Resealed corrected Jungle booster box
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This is really cool! I was aware that those 2001 barcodes were stuck over the Media Factory packs but I never considered that they’d have had to open up the existing Media Factory boxes in order to do that. Completely makes sense, I just never thought about it until now.
I don’t know if it can be said for sure that the corrections were included in the barcode sticker packs. It’s my belief that there would instead be a 6th variant where the 2001 barcode is printed directly onto the pack, and it’s those packs which I believe would have had the corrected versions as The Pokémon Center Company would have also had to print more cards to fill them.
I have yet to see a printed 2001 barcode Jungle pack, but I can’t imagine them only doing this for Base Set and Neo 2.
You may also find that your resealed booster box has a 2001 barcode stuck over that as well. The pack barcodes are 4521329007823 but the box barcode should be 4521329007830.
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Oh my god, I absolutely love this image