18/01/2025
Not gonna lie, the advert is great and all, but I have some real talk.
At this point it's probably a smarter idea for the social media/marketing team at The Pokémon Company International to, perhaps, not publish scheduled posts like this given how tone deaf it looks.
That and perhaps this should signal to them that printing 5+ massive sets annually, including 'special collections' (which have cleverly creeped up from being very small mini-expansions to basically large, full-fledged expansions in the own right, yet unavailable through booster boxes and only specifically marked releases), is clearly not the way to go.
Perhaps for their bottom line, but not quite in favour of their consumers.
Given that their printing is spread thin across so many large expansions and that they can't keep up with demand, perhaps they should go back to basics, focus on less expansion releases (or reduce set sizes altogether without the padding) so they can print more of fewer sets, and then fans and genuine collectors won't be waiting for reprints as they move onto the next set after this, which incidentally displaces the reprinting of any existing sets!
Look, I don't claim to know what they do, and how their processes work, but regardless of that, this is becoming such a ridiculous norm at this point that it's causing players to give up. The sentiment in this game is so negative now that even if they were to increase the capacity of their printing, it would be more welcome that they reduce releases per year so people have the opportunity to collect, play and not feel perpetually exhausted and exasperated. It's become a joke.
And if I were leading their digital and social strategy, I'd be better aligning that kind of marketing in a crisis by avoiding the topic altogether and pausing all of that content for the interim! They've seen the negative sentiment and, sadly, one announcement addressing the issue isn't going to cause negative sentiment to wane.
It's becoming cumbersome. I'm sick and tired of seeing the joy being sapped from kids, parents and the community who just can't waltz in at leisure to get anything they want. I've not even bothered to pre-order stuff at this point, I'm happy to wait - I just, to but it plainly, can't be arsed.
15+ years ago when I started PokeCollection and PokeTubing - what a time that was. What I'm seeing now, with the complacency on the part of business, and greed on the part of those wishing to make a quick buck - not cool.
Unfortunately, you won't get this real talk from influencers that receive complementary product as they would fear the perk being taken away from them. Instead, they get to promote as part of the wider marketing influencer strategy, which is equally as tone deaf as the issues with supply, demand, and all of that chaos.
