Propaganda is a strong word, but for years, the fullness of their printers has been Pokemon’s go-to scapegoat to absorb blame for not meeting market demand.
In 1999 I think the story was that some runs of sports cards never saw print because their printers were too busy with Pokemon. Today, I don’t see other card games printing short because their normal printers are too backed up printing Pokemon. There are more printers that exist which could be printing Pokemon, or could have been made ready to print Pokemon with enough preparation. It’s feasible to me that a certain amount of money could have made this problem go away, if it were in Pokemon’s best interest to solve it.
Even if Pokemon is truly shocked at the scope of demand and they are struggling to print, this is not their first rodeo with the highs of cyclical demand, or even their second. Surely, someone from Pokemon would have learned from the 2021 situation and taken preemptive action to avoid it entirely.
But no, I agree, I think they’re laughing all the way to the bank.
I don’t blame demand for this situation. It’s all an issue with supply. If TPC/TPCi wanted to fix the problem, they would adjust supply to meet demand like every other company out there.
Look I’ve got all the answers to this dilemma. Can’t meet demand? Kill demand baby! Just release the most unappealing set to collectors of all time.
have little variety for IR and SIR cards to increase pull rates for specific cards. And make some of them pokemon like Unfeazant, pyroar female, Gulpin, quilladin, spewpa, stunky, slugma etc. Then for Trainers give us SIRs for characters like Gordy, Pryce, Milo, Crasher Wake, Lenora, Ramos, Kofu, and the like. Do you even remember half these guys? I didn’t I had to look them up. Give them to less popular artists, tell them to not try to do anything inspiring or interesting looking. Make competitively terrible cards that are all just inferior versions of everything else so that the gold item cards will never be bought by anyone. No gold card versions of pokemon either for good measure.
Now you have destroyed all the hype. Transient opportunists will leave, and then whoever is left can’t have their fun again. Hire me to ruin everything, I’d be fantastic.
Can you elaborate further? The alternative is a system where everyone gets 10 packs of each new set and isn’t allowed more if they worked harder for it
Exactly this. If capacity is truly 10 billion cards, make them count.
Remove energy cards from packs. You can already get energies from ETBs, or better yet, TPCi supplies every LCS with a brick of energies to give out to players.
put the code card QR code on the inside of the foil, instead of making it into a card.
Better balance of C/UC/R that you get from a booster pack
To be fair, I’m not exactly sure how it would work considering this hobby is basically just thinly veiled consumerism. I imagine it would look much different in a non capitalist system.
the pokeman company can completely shift their business model to online only, they can sell out all their product themselves or through other big box stores like amazon, walmart, target etc get rid of distributors/lgs/whatever and reduce costs significantly…
I think a lot of new “collectors” (if you want to call them that) are looking to make a quick buck, especially with the new uncertainty surrounding the stock market. Baseball cards are currently having a down year (the rookie class isn’t that strong as in previous seasons), so they’re breaking into the trading card market.
Influencers and scalpers also play a large part in the current mess. YouTubers drive up prices with new videos. Scalpers buy out stock at stores, making products difficult to obtain. Social media plays a huge part in this. Before I started getting back into collecting, I’d occasionally see videos of people ripping packs.
I must admit, some videos are entertaining (I love the Should I Open It or Keep It Sealed channel). Content alone is enough to pique anyone’s interest in the hobby.
You make a pretty good point about social media. It has me wondering if the hype from people watching is a trend that people will get tired of seeing, or if its just the beginning. I wonder if TPC has taken this into consideration and are dwelling on it for the future products.
Maybe, maybe not tbh. The one piece tcg has tournament cards for both online and offline winner variants. I think TPC in general wants it to be kid friendly so LGS’s imo need to stay, but the times do be changing rapidly.
IMHO, scalping is solely the responsibility of those who buy it. It’s just a thing. Luxury goods. We don’t need it. So, scalpers are making money in a system that incentivizes and requires them to make money. They’re not making a killing on it. Except for Destined Rivals Are they morally right? IDK. But they’re certainly not wrong.
BUT I do see large buy-ups, and you could argue that WERE THEY SMART, scalpers would realize that their profit margins are quickly disappearing to nothing, yet they still buy. Can we blame them for having bad business sense? Can we blame them more than those who buy at the severely marked up prices, for whatever reason?
There could be more nuance, but I’d rather be accusatory today.
Social media is definitely not just a starting trend. People starting new selling and opening channels every day, new blogs and sites, every 11 year old seems to want to be running a channel because they see it and its just the thing to do. Every vendor and cardshop streaming as well.
