What are some cards with ~drama~ surrounding their official releases?

[stagecoach]

I like cards with stories, which is the key trait that attracts me to promo cards. When there’s something unique about how a card was released I find those stories fascinating — especially when something goes wrong.

I don’t think stories like this are all collected in one place, so I thought it’d be a fun thread. I’ll start with two that I like!

Happy Birthday, Pikachu (US)

This card was awarded by mail to participants of an art contest!

Either a huge number of Birthday Pikachus arrived to their recipients damaged or people were trying to get duplicates from Wizards, because they got so many calls for replacements they had to stop accepting the complaints. “Due to the overwhelming number of calls we received about getting a replacement Happy Birthday, Pikachu promo card, we will no longer be fulfilling requests in this manner.”

Each League was sent a “small amount” of Birthday Pikachus that were meant to be used to replace damaged cards in-store.

Cynthia’s Feelings [Battle Road 2008 Promo] (JPN)

This card was originally supposed to be distributed at five different events, but the coordinators received violent threats from an unknown party and decided to cancel the events. The card was only distributed twice because of this!

バトルロード スプリング★2008

“In response to this situation, as a result of careful discussions with related facilities, we consider the safety of our customers to be our top priority, and we are very sorry, but we are sorry for the Kanto tournament and the Chubu tournament and Kyushu tournament scheduled after that. We have decided to cancel it. I am sorry that I cannot explain the details from the viewpoint that it will not interfere with the investigation, but I would appreciate it if you could forgive me.”

I don’t think we ever learned more than that, at least on the English-speaking internet. I’d love to learn if anything else was ever learned or done. I’m particularly interested if anyone was ever apprehended.

————————

What other examples are there like this where things went wrong? Things could go a little wrong or a lot wrong, it’s still fun to learn.

Be sure to detail and source your stories! To give this thread some scope, I’m interested in official releases that didn’t go as planned — whatever that might look like!

[kamon]

Great thread idea! Looking forward to seeing what comes out of this.

[Frosty.Puppy]

This deck isn’t mine, although the 1st edition deck has a rocky history behind it.

[stagecoach]

You gotta say what it is! You tease.

[Frosty.Puppy]

Ah apologies, I didn’t want to spread any misinformation as what I’ve heard may not be entirely accurate.

The story of the 1st edition decks and their myth distribution status involves an incident due to a warehouse fire and the employees salvaging what they could.

[livindavido]

Great topic!

Mike Boozer of WOTC and the accidental typo on Best of Game Hitmonchan.

Giving it 60HP instead of 70HP making it weaker to WOTC’s own creation Dark Raichu with 70HP. Shaking up the whole meta and causing a lot of internal drama.

Credit to this information from this video (around 33.33):

Speaking of Pokémon TCG: Jamboree, the Cancelled 14th Pokémon TCG Set

[stagecoach]

@Frosty.Puppy

Ah apologies, I didn’t want to spread any misinformation as what I’ve heard may not be entirely accurate.

Never assume I know anything already — nobody tells me anything!

[thsigma]

25th anniversary McDonalds cards

People were buying tons of Happy Meals (in many cases just throwing out the food) for the cards. Employees were backdooring the boxes of packs to flip on ebay. People were buying out the stores, leading some McDonalds to refuse selling the toys unless you purchased a Happy Meal and then having limits. Some youtubers got hate for opening lots of the packs. Factor in the lack of supply of cards in major retailers…things were rough.

2021 sets were pretty crazy overall, but McDonalds is where things REALLY caught on imo. More people searched “pokemon cards” during the first couple days of the McDonalds set than at any other point in 2020, 2021, or 2022.

USA:

Worldwide:

[mrbubbles]

Not drama but a somber moment of a real-life disaster which was the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami also dubbed as the Great East Japan Earthquake. Due to this disaster, the 2011 World Championships were cancelled. A total of 7 promo cards, 2 (Emolga and Druddigon) of which were supposed to be tournament participation award (pictured below), and the other 5 (Pokemon Catcher, Grass, Water, Psychic and Metal) which were supposed to be side event participation prizes were never released.

This event also gave birth to Pokemon With You foundation which in 2011 was launched with the hope that children in the Tohoku region would feel that “Pokémon is always by their side” and that they would be able to relieve their anxiety and regain their smiles. This also led to the launch of the Tohoku Pokemon Center.

In 2014, a special promo XY-P was distributed also known as the Wagon Pikachu Promo. This promo was specifically given to the children heavily affected and had limited playgrounds.

This earthquake disaster also completely altered the BW anime storyline wherein a major story arc was dropped due to the anime content unfortunately coinciding with the disaster event.

Cheers!

[Frosty.Puppy]

@mrbubbles, fun facts about the Emolga, you’re correct it was never legally distributed but it’s actually known to exist! Also the scan doesn’t do the card justice, it’s actually a reverse mirror holo!

[smpratte]

The art academy cards were a hotbed of drama. From the community side, there was a weird gatekeeping of winners emails during the initial few years. From the winners side, getting them removed from psa because a couple artists threatened to press charges over extra copies.

Oh and I could write a lord of the rings trilogy on the Pikachu illustrator card. But that is mostly just the toxicity of the community.

[thsigma]

idk if its appropriate since the cards aren’t “released”, but signed cards have had lots of drama over the years, especially in the last year or so with how much more popular they are. Others more experienced can shed light, but there are some artists who flat out refuse to sign nowadays due to bad actors.

[Dyl]

The Pokemon Center Exclusive Chilling Reign ETBs were released with an error.

The Pokemon Center announced a manufacturing error with the exclusive Pokemon Center editions of the Chilling Reign ETBs. They were supposed to come with ten booster packs, but were accidentally manufactured with eight. Each box cost $10 more than a regular box. It was pretty dramatic as this was during a time when sealed modern product was pretty scarce on the shelves of big box stores.

[Typhlosion_Collector]

Is this where the cutting up a perfectly good sheet to make error cards talk goes?

[thsigma]

this was the “free” blister that people who preordered the etb got to remedy the slipup. Pretty neat item

[stagecoach]

That’s not really the spirit of the thread I had in mind. I wanted to talk about official releases where things did not go as planned.

I just made some title and OP tweaks to try to make that clear.

[Dyl]

The releases of the Extra Battle Day promos and Yu Nagaba Eeveelution promos were dramatic as packs were searched to find the more desirable ones (i.e., Lillie and Umbreon, respectively).

[rabby250]

Don’t have much time so let’s see what I can pull up in 10 minutes…

087/S-P F Charizard VMAX Rainbow/HR - Traditional Chinese

Originally announced to have 500 copies by officials, but turned out the criteria of receiving one is so hard (winning 5/6 straight in regional-level tournaments which was only held 8 times with ~12 winners each) only around 100 copies were actually given out, making it the rarest of all languages released. We don’t know if the remaining 400 copies ever existed.

Also…

038/S-P T Charizard VMAX Rainbow/HR - Thai

Listed in official card database and revealed to public but never released. I treat this as a tease from the officials.

[Kanto_Cowboy]

Pal Pad 031/S-P. I’m lucky to own this in a psa 10 (pop 7). Pic of my card and excerpt from the always eloquent Bulbapedia:

“ As the TCG transitioned into the Sword & Shield Series, Pal Pad was reprinted again with new artwork by Ryo Ueda in the Sword & Shield expansion, first released in the Japanese V Starter Set Fighting. In Japan, a Mirror Holofoil version of this print was released as a S-P Promotional card and was available as a winner’s prize at the 2020 Aichi Champion’s League, held at the Aichi International Exhibition Center, Tokoname on December 21, 2019.[4] The qualification criteria were the same as the first 2019-2020 Champion’s League meeting.[5] This print also features the Championship Series 2020 logo in the bottom right corner of the illustration. It is likely the card would have been available at subsequent Champion’s League meetings scheduled for the 2019-2020 season, but those events were canceled in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.”

[admiral]

Hehe