Consumer Society around Pokémon Products
From Mod Mania
Consumer Society around Pokémon Products
Try to remember the times around begging of the past decade and the most popular childhood phenomenon at those times. Most probably you will get a mental image of a Pokémon. Starting as a GameBoy game in a single market (Japan in 1996), it expanded into a media-mix, global operation outstanding for both the longevity and expanse of its popularity[1]. Inevitably, it created a great consumer society mostly consists of children aged 4-14. It was such a huge community that it could be hard and might be wrong to try to identify on a broad sense and over its media-mix( not over just one product of this media-mix). However, it shows similar characteristics and structure in the way it effects and create its consumer society in almost every product line belonging that craze.
Concept of Pokémon
Players of the games are designated as Pokémon Trainers, and the two general goals (in most Pokémon games) for such Trainers are: to complete the Pokédex by collecting all of the available Pokémon species found in the fictional region where that game takes place; and to train a team of powerful Pokémon from those they have caught to compete against teams owned by other Trainers, and eventually become the strongest Trainer, the Pokémon Master. These themes of collecting, training, and battling are present in almost every version of the Pokémon franchise, including the video games, the anime and manga series, and the Pokémon Trading Card Game[2].
Consumer society and reoccurring themes with in this group
Aforementioned before, consumer society of Pokémon products are, as being direct or in direct buyers, children. In my opinion, although a very consciously consuming act cannot be seen any field of consumption, for children marketplace, it is a lot more unconscious, more instinct. In addition, since there is a vast amount of products interrelated to each other to consume within the media-mix of Pokémon, this consumer society is very obsessive. They are willing to get involve every act related to Pokémon to create a coherence understanding or possessiveness.
The reason behind this could be the reoccurring theme of collecting, which is the main concept of Pokémon itself. If you are playing with poke cards, you have to collect; if you are playing video games; you have to wait, play long time, and get new products with which you can catch new and rare Pokémon...So, in the consumer society of Pokémon products, you have to be collective. To illustrate, if you a member of poke cards consuming society, you would be getting to the top in hierarchy as long as you collect more cards, hold rare cards. It must be also important to having a good sense of playing with these cards, but without having the qualified cards, someone cannot play with them. That is way consumer could be willing to give a lot much money to have a card which he or she does not have.
As another example of a specific consumer society, which I used to be a participant of it, is that a local one Turkey. In Turkey, at those time when Pokémon was very popular, a community is created around Pokémon ‘’taso’’s( which is a round plastic has pokemon images on it) which you can reach them buying chips. Since other Pokémon products were relatively expensive for Turkey’s market, it was a more convenient way to reach Pokémon lovers and profit from their love. Someone could play with these tasos with another one, and gain or lose his or her tasos. In the structure of this society, as usual, having more and rare cards can carry you to the top of hierarchy. Also, a common narrative was popular among the consumer society about who has beaten whom; who has got the rarest taso. Even they were some urban legends that if you buy a specific kind of chips, you are likely to get the specific Pokémon tasos. It was that much a dramatic habit for some children that I saw many of them crying and fighting for the tasos that they have lost. As for the last observe among this society, if you are a new comer to society, you would be seen as a prey since it would be easier to beat you.
Another specialty of consumer society of Pokémon, in general, something related to Japanese team based culture instead of Western’s individual based culture. Pokémon reinforces in its players this "sense of belonging", of being part of a tribe, which calls itself "pokemaniacs" and fights together to reach certain goals. All the rules of game, all the stories of characters, all the relationship chains established by the pokemon universe reinforce the trait of a family grouping, emphasizing harmony, co-operation, conformity, putting pressure putting pressure on the individual so they do not miss the boat and become an outsider. Consumer society around Pokémon has that property to be in a team, to have some small groups in this society within in a vogue hierarchical system to complete a sense of belonging and behave accordingly. This could be seen even today with some forums in Internet and some online game actions related to Pokémon culture. There used to be great consumer community around the pokemon produts and still one can easily find examples from this community mostly in Internet. The way they get involve with Pokémon culture slightly different than past but it is still alive in formats such as create your own Pokémon on some websites.
References: [1]http://web.mit.edu/condry/Public/cooljapan/Feb23-2006/Allison-03-Postcol-Portble.pdf [2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pokemon
