Pokemon craze blamed for schoolyard bad behaviour
PM - Monday, November 22, 1999 6:41
MARK COLVIN: School children have probably always been prone to crazes, from hoola-hoops and yoyo's to skateboards and stamp collecting, and one of the hardy perennials is trading cars.
The current rage is for something called Pokemon. It's not just a schoolyard craze, it's a massive marketing campaign. You don't just trade cards, you can link up your game machines and trade the 151 virtual characters that you've collected in the game.
There are toys, a TV programme and now a movie. The slogan is, "Gotta catch 'em all", but many parents would be wondering whether that refers to the characters or the company's aims for every primary school child in Australia.
Rachel Mealey reports.
RACHEL MEALEY: It's a world-wide craze over a collection of odd-looking creatures. One hundred and fifty one, to be precise. With names like Pikachu, Meowth and Giber.
(EXCERPT FROM POKEMON SONG): "I am the handsome one." "I am the gorgeous one."
RACHEL MEALEY: Pokemon is available as an electronic game, but the associated trading cards have been swapped in schoolyards across the country.
The president of the New South Wales' Parents and Citizens Federations says unlike the crazes of old like hoola-hoops and marbles, Pokemon is bringing out the worst in our children.
UNIDENTIFIED: Kids tend to take things at face value. I mean adults seem to have a cynical outlook but kids seem to take things at face value and that's how these crazes start. You know, here we've got this. This will make you popular. Won't you like to have this? Wouldn't this be great? Won't you look terrific with this around your neck or wherever it might be, and if you've got lots of them people are going to want you.
Now kids need and want to be popular, the same as all of us do, and what they're doing now is using the same sorts of things that adults do. Possessions to make themselves popular. Possessions to make themselves powerful.
RACHEL MEALEY: With reports of violence and bullying in the schoolyard over the trading of cards, schools in many states have banned the products completely. Beverley Baker says it's easy to ban Pokemon, but schools should pounce on the opportunity to teach children about the power of marketeers.
BEVERLEY BAKER: If they're using violence to acquire property, in big people's languages that's called "war" and that's a really important discussion for young people. It's really important to say how these kinds of things create all sorts of flow-ons and all sorts of problems for your society as a whole.
It is a really powerful exercise in a social dynamic that young people need to explore so that they don't fall into those sorts of traps.
RACHEL MEALEY: It's the latest global craze to follow the Power Rangers, Cabbage Patch Dolls and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. But the Pokemon craze is on another scale altogether.
In Japan, sales of the Pokemon market are estimated to be US$3.8 billion. The key to the big bucks is the Pokemon concept spans continents, age groups, gender and media. As well as being a comic, there's a television show, videos, and a movie which grossed $US32 million in it's opening weekend in the US and, with a December 16 release date in Australia, get set for the onset of Pokomania here.
That frenzy of consumerism is sure to be fuelled by reports of a shortage in supply of the products. The company behind the product, Nintendo, says September's earthquake in Taiwan damaged microchip and other part suppliers.
UNIDENTIFIED: Well, it's fair to say that we are experiencing some production problems with a number of products that are in, I suppose, the best situation is high global demand for Nintendo Corporation worldwide, and news has just come through that unfortunately it is impacting on some of the stock that's available for Australia.
RACHEL MEALEY: Nintendo's Director of Marketing in Australia, Gavin Bust, has this piece of advice for consumers.
GAVIN BUST: We can't fulfil all of our customers orders, so the best advice for consumers is certainly if they're looking for a Nintendo product for Christmas is to get in early.
MARK COLVIN: But he would say that, wouldn't he? Nintendo Marketing Director Gavin Bust, ending that report from Rachel Mealey.
