Pokemon Is Catching, and Keeping, Them

Anthony Ruiz was celebrating his 8th birthday at the Cineplex Beverly Center here, joining the hundreds of children and parents taking in ''Pokemon: The First Movie'' on four screens at the center, one of 3,000 theaters that presented this animated film on its opening day, Wednesday, and haven't had a quiet moment since.

The 90-minute feature earned $10.1 million its first day, a school day (''Pokeflu,'' it was called), the largest Wednesday opening of any animated film, ever, and the biggest Wednesday opening for any film in the history of Warner Brothers. On Thursday it made $9 million. By Monday, its earnings are expected to exceed $50 million.

Nearby toy shops sported prominent Pokemon displays; children clutched their precious Pokemon figurines and many wore Pokemon T-shirts. No doubt, some had Pokemon video games in their knapsacks. Anthony struggled to explain what all the fuss was about. ''It has these characters,'' he said. ''They come from a different world. People collect them and they have these different battles.'' Finally, he gave up. ''It's just cool,'' he said.

The Pokemon craze can seem impenetrable to those -- adults, for instance -- who are not conversant with its intricate fantasy world. Even those who are promoting the phenomenon, and reaping the astonishing rewards, are a little stunned by how deftly it has attached itself to the hearts of millions of American children, especially boys aged 5 to 12.

But while luck has certainly played a role, Pokemon mania is also a result of a calculated series of creative and marketing decisions aimed at learning the lessons of previous toy fads like Beanie Babies, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.

The idea is to use the lessons to build something that will not only resonate with children but also survive longer than the 18 months to three years that these crazes normally last, perhaps even attaining the Holy Grail of Toydom, legs as long as Barbie's.

''We put a considerable amount of attention into that,'' said Gail Tilden, vice president for product acquisition development at Nintendo and the queen of all things Pokemon, responsible for shepherding the Pokemon brand through its many American manifestations.

When Pokemon was initially rolled out in Japan, beginning with the introduction of the video game in 1996, it was a much slower process. The movie did not open in Japan until the summer of 1998, two years after the video game was introduced and the second film (yes, there is already a second, and it is to open in the United States next summer) opened in Japan just three months ago.

Ms. Tilden is responsible for making sure that all the Pokemon products adhere to the basic theme, that none of the products are marketed to preschoolers or toddlers (because if babies play with it, older children will want nothing to do with it), that Pokemon characters are attached to compatible toys (a water-related Pokemon on a water toy, for instance). Packs of trading cards featuring the characters go for $7 to $9 a pop. And there are dozens of related consumer items from clothes to toothbrushes.

Even before the movie's release, toy industry analysts were estimating that Pokemon in all its various commercial forms would sell $6 billion worldwide by the end of this year.

Ms. Tilden monitors the rolling out of new Pokemon characters in a deliberate way to stimulate the collecting side of the craze: not so few characters that they are too easily collected nor so many that collecting them all, the goal of all true Pokemoners, seems unrealizable. ''We are trying to mirror the property very well, not just put the Pokemon theme on anything,'' Ms. Tilden said.

For those unacquainted with Pokemon, it is a series of products that revolve around a fantasy world created by Japanese animators and game creators in which there are two kinds of creatures, humans and Pokemon. The Pokemon, or pocket monsters, are 151 animal-type creatures (three new ones are introduced in the new film, bringing the total to 154), each with its own personality and powers and the ability to evolve into other creatures with enhanced powers. The 12-year-old hero of the story, Ash, yearns to be a master Pokemon trainer, and to do so he vows to capture all the creatures. (''Gotta catch 'em all'' is the Pokemon tag line and the anthem of all Pokemon enthusiasts.)

Children can imitate Ash and try to capture Pokemon, as well, either in the video game or by buying their plastic figures or trading cards.

''It is very difficult for any franchise to come into prominence in the kid world, to be forefront in their minds,'' said Gene Del Vecchio, the author of ''Creating Ever-Cool: A Marketer's Guide to the Kid's Heart'' (Pelican, 1997) and president of CoolWorks, a consulting company that helps companies invent and build brands for children.

''There are thousands and thousands of competitors for that honored slot,'' he said. ''Even more difficult is trying to keep within a kid consciousness for more than the 18 months or three years these things normally last. How do you create a mechanism whereby you can reinvent yourself?''

While many children's marketing experts said the shrewd creation of the Pokemon empire -- its perfectly pitched emotional story line, the way it stimulates social interaction, the sense of power and belonging it gives children -- give it a good chance to avoid burnout, others were not so sure.

''It is really something amazing that has occurred,'' said Steveanne Auerbach, who calls herself Dr. Toy and reviews toys and children's products from her Internet site, www.drtoy.com. ''But I expect Pokemon will have the normal life span of these sorts of things. It's here until the next wave comes along.''

While some may look at the Pokemon craze as a marvelous marketing machine, some of those caught up in it are not as generous in their assessments. Several schools around the nations have banned the Pokemon cards because administrators found the frenzy over them too disrupting, parents have complained of the large sums of money required to satisfy a child's Pokemon habit and some of the children themselves have begun to resist the brand's ubiquitousness.

One Toronto eighth-grade boy whose Web name is Evex and who refused to give his real name has started his own anti-Pokemon Web page (http://members.xoom.com/ xoom/pukemon/index.htm). It is one of more than a dozen anti-Pokemon sites that have popped up in the last several months, yet it is just a tiny fraction of the pro-Pokemon sites and chat rooms on the Internet.

''At first, I sort of liked Pokemon but then I thought about it and decided to create the page,'' Evex said. ''I consider Pokemon to be some sort of scam to take all your money, with all their marketing stuff.''

Pokemon -- which began life in the United States in September 1998 as a Nintendo video game and quickly expanded into beanbag toys, action figures, comic books, T-shirts and a cartoon show -- looked as if it had reached fever pitch last spring with the release of Pokemon collectible trading cards that became the currency of choice on thousands of American playgrounds.

Turns out that was just a warm-up.

The combination of a new fall season of ''Pokemon'' cartoons on the WB network, which runs the program 11 times a week, the staggeringly successful release of the ''Pokemon'' movie and a concurrent marketing tie-in at 8,000 Burger King restaurants has succeeded in catapulting the Japanese-born phenomenon to new heights.

''I just got home from taking five kids to the 'Pokemon' movie and to Burger King,'' said Lynn Rosenblum, president of Toy Power Consulting. ''When you look at it from a marketing and a branding perspective, it's brilliant. It covers television, it covers video, it covers things on your computer, there's the cards, there's the toys, there are art contests. It's really one of the products that has done the best job of covering all those bases.''

What often happens, in cases of toy lines like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, for instance, is that by the time it becomes clear that the concept has clicked with children it is too late to get a movie in production and into theaters before the fad has begun to fade. Movies are expensive and take a long time to make; crazes sometimes disappear in a blink. With Pokemon, though, everything was ready and could be set into action whenever marketers deemed the time was right.

So while it may look like luck that Warner Brothers has its ''Pokemon'' movie out at just the moment when the fever is at its height, it is anything but luck, said Brad Ball, president for domestic theatrical marketing at Warner Brothers Pictures.

''We counseled very closely with our partners, using their insights on how they saw the new season television episodes impacting, and we decided that the new episodes would further raise demand for Pokemon,'' Mr. Ball said. ''So it would further raise demand we decided to release the movie following the launch of the new television season but still ahead of the competition in a very competitive environment.''

The toughest competition appears to be Disney's ''Toy Story 2,'' which is to be released on Nov. 24, giving ''Pokemon'' two weeks in theaters before Buzz Lightyear returns. ''Then, we can turn the corner into the new year and have our video division ready for a spring release,'' Mr. Ball said.

After that, probably in the fall of next year, there will be an entirely new Pokemon series. The current story line, known for its red-and-blue Nintendo cartridges, will be followed by a gold-and-silver story line, Ms. Tilden said. It, too, will star Ash, but he will embark on an entirely new adventure. Some of the former Pokemon creatures will return, others will have mutated and there will be new ones, too. (She would not say exactly how many, but just ''dozens.'') In the first story, the Pokemon seemed to be of indeterminate sex. In the new one, some creatures will have definite male or female characteristics.

''What we are doing is extending the fantasy,'' Ms. Tilden said. ''It's the same world, but a new story. You will be able to find out if the one you have is a boy or a girl.''

There are two things that a children's brand needs, Mr. Del Vecchio said. It has to ''touch timeless emotional needs within the child'' and it needs a ''mechanism that would allow it to stay fresh'' and not go the way of the Power Rangers.

''What Barbie did was nail the whole notion of achievement for little girls,'' Mr. Del Vecchio said. ''Pokemon was constructed to touch several timeless emotional needs. Part of its power comes from the story line of good vanquishing evil, where the child becomes part of the story and is empowered to capture his own monsters, train them and have them fight for him. It also stimulates the desire to collect them all, but it's competitive in a way that helps inspire social interaction.''

Pokemon has its own story line (as did Power Rangers and Ninja Turtles), but it also taps into the notion of collecting that sustained the Beanie Babies craze. While Power Rangers had the story line without the collecting and Beanie Babies had the collecting without the story line, Pokemon has both. All of this augurs well for the future, Mr. Del Vecchio said.

''The principles they are applying indicate it will last longer than the average kid franchise,'' he said. ''Whether it will last 30 years will depend on other factors, like how good they are going to be as marketers and what other franchises may be introduced that will do an even better job. You know, kids are fickle. They will get tired of these kind of properties and dash off to the next one.''