Every developed nation has its share of unusual and sometimes wild consumer fads. Here we’ve experienced wave after wave of them, including things like the hula hoop, slinky, and pet rock. Despite generation after generation of independent thinkers and rebels, we still have those periods when we all behave more like a herd of sheep than loners. Occasionally these unusual items go wild in more than one country, and the allure of rare Japanese Pokémon cards is a great example.

These cards are just one cog in a huge creative marketing machine showing what genius can do to expand the popularity of a single fad into a mega empire. This huge undertaking stems from the creative idea of ​​a single Japanese who, as a child, enjoyed catching bugs. His dream was to create some form of entertainment to convey the joy he experienced to others.

The tool he used was the popular electronic game known as the Game Boy. When she first saw it and noticed the wire attached to it, she imagined bugs crawling on the wire and decided to make a game out of it. Unfortunately, as excited as he was about winning, he failed to convince Nintendo that it was a worthwhile project. Fortunately, a friend of his had more success in the company and finally decided to finance the development of his dream, and thus Pokémon was born.

But the game had its fans, and word of mouth spread, which simply and inexplicably took off. As their popularity exploded, spin-offs were everything a marketing company could dream of and hope would happen. One of the creatures in the game was called Pikachu, it was made of plastic and became ubiquitous; almost everyone had one, although it had little or no functionality.

With the addition of a series of cartoons explaining the characters, the Pokémon craze spread across the world. While many here in America don’t even know where the name came from, the fascination with the creatures still became a widespread commercial success. Japanese Pokémon characters are known all over the world.

The Pokémon products now being sold around the world were predicted by the creators of the game. The addition of trading cards was pure marketing genius, and now rare Japanese Pokemon cards are a lucrative business in themselves. Some rare Japanese Pokémon cards sell for thousands of dollars, while others are collected by millions of people around the world.