Gotta Catch 'Em All!

I was browsing through my memory banks, thinking for some kind of impact that media has had on my life and society. And them, WHOOM! It hits me with all the subtlety of a cudgel in the face. My life has been forever shaped by the international phenomenon known as Pokemon. (Link to Pokemon website: http://www.pokemon.com/).

I was in the fourth grade when I first came across those adorable little pocket monsters. I was a little behind the curve when it came to acquiring the hottest game around, as I lacked a nintendo gameboy on which to play it. However, when I popped the cartridge into the gameboy and turned on the screen to see a cute little "charmander" staring me in the face (http://guidesmedia.ign.com/guides/9846/images/charmander.gif). I knew I was in love. I could not stop playing this game. It was frighteningly addictive; it was a physical impossibility to put the gameboy down.

Though I was young at the time, I realize in retrospect how much the Pokemon craze had completely immersed American pop culture. The images of Pikachu (http://anthropoasis.free.fr/IMG/gif/Pikachu.gif) and other cute little critters were on television shows, clothing, spring-off video games, and the Internet. It's incredible to me that a foreign-made video game was able to completely take over the youth of a country. To me, this popularity wave, supported by marketing groups looking to exploit the pokemon frenzy, is part of a market that exploits the impressionability of kids who are looking for entertainment. This makes sense to me, in that children are a class of individuals who demand market consumption from their parents. However, this market deluge changed kids lives. It's kind of sad that when I think of my childhood, I think of the different video games I've played. People have many different kind of influences on their lives, but I am a product of an age where targeted marketing campaigns have drastically changed the culture of my youth.