I was a newspaper reporter when, back in December 1997,I was aboard a Japan Airline flight from Tokyo to San Francisco. The in-flight entertainment began with a 30-minute broadcast by ABC News. (Side note: In those days, there were no personal screens or on-demand movies for those of us in economy class seats. Everything was shown on a smallish screen on the bulkhead at the front of the section. You either watched what everyone else was watching, or you watched nothing at all.)
During that broadcast at 36,000 feet, Peter Jennings (one of the greatest news anchors in the history of television) did a brief segment on the Porygon incident. Intrigued, I made note of it. Not because I was interested in the news angle. I was interested in the business opportunity.
Shortly after I returned to Japan, I quit my newspaper job and began selling Pokemon merchandise to the rest of the world.
Peter Jennings was one of my journalism heroes. And he also was one of my Pokemon heroes.
I remember seeing some of these and even more local angles as a 5-6 year old in the late 90s. It felt sort of like a validation seeing it generate that sort of interest. Very nostalgic!
The algorithm struck again!
This very short video is a nice time capsule of how small the market was in the late 2000s, with some great advice in the end .
.