Even grown-up kids like myself have been caught out by this one. Anyone who has followed recent crazes, watching youngsters trading Magic Cards or seeing fashionable toys banned from school by zealous teachers, is aware of the addictive nature of many of today's playthings - parents, who end up paying for them, even more so.
And Pokemon bears many similarities to its predecessors. The appeal to the completist in every kid, the lure of the valuable card that might be in the next pack you buy, the magnetism of a new and alluring mythology into which the game draws you, the precarious balance between TV toy programmes and TV toy advertising, the necessary link with technology - we've seen all this before, and, to echo an anonymous Old English poet: 'That passed by; so may this.' Look out for most of today's Pokemon desirables in next year's Oxfam shops.
And yet, this is different.
Japanese origins
First the history. The Pokemon mythos is the invention of a Japanese inventor Satoshi Tajiri, whose boyhood insect-collecting obsession led to the game. In the West, most of the Pokemon names are changed: thus the central character in the TV series, Satoshi, becomes Ash. Only Pikachu, Ash's sidekick, remains unwesternised.
