The big game hunters

Millions of dollars and the world's finest brains have created Pokemon, the biggest toy phenomenon ever. Your child will be an addict by Christmas, warns OLIVER SWANTON

Last weekend 20,000 children - nicknamed the Kiddie Crack Addicts - descended on a shopping mall in Detroit. Their fix? A hand-held Japanese computer game called Pokemon. The game has been dubbed Kiddie Crack because nothing before has gripped America's pre-teens so completely. Nintendo, the games' makers, have taken every toy craze known to child, combined them all, refined them and turned out the mother of all money-making machines.

The Pokemon phenomenon has already engulfed Japan, America, Australia and most of Latin America. Next month it arrives in Britain. They want our children and they're gonna get them. There is absolutely nothing a parent can do. They have spent six years perfecting this craze - three times longer than any computer game before it - and know exactly how to press every single child's buttons.

Pokemon is hyped as a politically correct, parent-friendly street fighter. It's a role-play computer game parents don't seem to mind their kids playing, which is just as well because nothing this addictive has been unleashed on Britain's pre-teens before. Its genius is that it is designed perfectly to tie in with the spin-off toys, branded cartoon series, and Hollywood film that were launched alongside it. The game is based around 151 collectible Pocket Monsters (Pokemon is a a shortening of this name), which look equally cute on a Game Boy, a TV, a cinema screen or the shelves of your local toyshop. It's not a game, it's a phenomenon. "Gotta catch 'em all", the product's catchphrase, is repeated like a mantra by children wherever the product has been launched. The whole thing instills feelings of awe and disgust, in equal measure.

Pokemon Fever is not simply a school yard fad - it cuts right across America. Whenever a publicity stunt is staged - which they are continuously - it makes the "And finally" item on the news. The event in Detroit was the "third level" of a marketing campaign Nintendo's senior vice president, Peter Main, can't help but describe with glee as "mammoth". British television personality Jonathan Ross, whose children became addicted to the game on holiday in Florida, notes that the craze is so widespread that "even grumpy old men know the rather alien names of the game's characters."

Over $30m was spent on PR and advertising to launch Pokemon in America, three times as much as Nintendo has spent on similar games in the past. But that, like the computer game itself, is just the tip of the iceberg. It does not include the money spent by Kentucky Fried Chicken, which gave away tens of thousands of cuddly versions of the game's main characters. Or the money Warner Bros spent on the animated cartoon series, which has topped the ratings on kids TV. Or the money spent on the Hollywood movie due for release in September and predicted to trounce Austin Powers and Star Wars at the box office. Or the money spent by Hasbro, Tiger Electronics et al which have licences to manufacture the 151 collectable and (parents will be desperately unhappy to hear), limited edition toy monsters from the game, bouncy balls, books, stickers, clothes, sweets, lunch boxes, key rings, cards.

It is, however, all money well spent because the kids can't get enough. Pokemon has surpassed even the wildest executive's wet dreams. The industry is worth a staggering pounds 6bn and rising - fast. Twelve million copies of the game have been sold in Japan, while in America sales of hand-held Game Boys, on which Pokemon is played, have quadrupled. The spin-off computer games, Pokemon Snap and Pinball, are selling so rapidly they're breaking even the records set by the original Pokemon titles. In Japan the film was the second biggest grossing release of 1998 and the follow-up is expected to better it later this year. Meanwhile, in America, the trading cards are selling so quickly that a black market has emerged on which they sell at four times the sticker price. In Japan, where there is an department store the size of Hamleys dedicated to Pokemon, the cards have been banned in most schools.

This is the most contrived and controlled phenomenon ever conceived. The cartoon feeds directly into the sales of the game, running alongside it like a permanent commercial - but one that makes rather than costs money. The game meanwhile is one long continuous product placement, featuring a hundred and one gimmicky spin-offs that are, of course, available at a toy shop near you.

"Everything Nintendo and Hasbro have ever done has simply been a dry run for this," says Sarah Sheppard, editor of industry magazine Toy Trader. "Years of toy concepts like Furby and Tamagotchi have just been a chance to learn valuable lessons. They've got every single possible ingredient in Pokemon and it's set to run and run. The must-have toy is no longer up for grabs this Christmas."

The only thing that has overshadowed it, at least in adults' minds, has been The Phantom Menace. "But," says Sheppard, "that's been a gigantic mistake. Kids have been bored witless by Star Wars. The toy industry and the media backed the wrong horse." Pokemon monsters are outselling Star Wars figures by five to one at FAO Schwartz in the US.

Nintendo, which created the global icon Mario (of Mario Bros fame), seems

to have cracked it. In a world of computer game addiction it has microwaved the best and turned out a new, bigger, more powerful fix. "It eases you in, slowly but surely," notes Alex Huhtala, consumer editor at Computer & Video Games magazine. "After less than 20 minutes, you're completely hooked. You have no idea that you're addicted, but you are."

Such a creation is no happy accident. The game's original designer, Satoshi Tajeri, is regarded in programming circles as a living god. The game spent six years in research and development. Industry observers whisper that "experts", like child psychologists, were employed to fine-tune it.

Nintendo's real victory, however, has been to take on board parents' traditional fears about computer games - that they're violent and do not encourage their offspring to play outside with other children. They have done so not because Nintendo is a huggy-feely Blairesque corporation, but because this is a superbly tuned money-making machine.

The aim of the game is to collect and train Pokemon, by fighting wild monsters and/or other trainers. However, the cute-looking monsters, like Wild Pidgey, which looks like a moderately angry pigeon, don't die when you beat them to a pulp with your special skills, like a bubble attack (remember this parent-friendly), they faint. (Ahhhh, look it fainted under my unrestrained and unprovoked attack.) Thus Nintendo avoids the grief- stricken-pre-teens-in-Tamagotchi-bereavement-counselling-sessions scenario. And parents breathe a sigh of relief.

And it doesn't stop there. The central aim of the game is to collect all 151 Pokemon - the 151st was unveiled in Tokyo last month and 78,000 kids turned up to see it. There are two versions of the game and each only has 139 Pokemon in it. Ah!, you cry, we knew the evil empire was up to its old tricks - forcing up sales by making it impossible to finish the game without extra add-ons. But not so, it's far cleverer and more covert than that. The kids are encouraged to use a cable connector, to trade Pokemon with other players. And Nintendo has been careful in its advertising to portray this social element in the out-of-doors - between children with hand-held Game Boys in playgrounds, on the school-bus or in the street. Huhtala believes it to be the most parent-friendly game ever conceived.

Then just as the kids have mastered the game, bought the 151 collectable toys, eaten the sweets and worn the clothes, the Pokemon League kicks in, which is what the 20,000 Kiddie Crack Addicts were up to in Detroit last weekend. There they can win badges not available in the shops and compete to be a Pokemon Master. Those that aren't too good at it can buy spin-off games, a safari trip through a land of monsters they can photograph, collect and catalogue. Then there's the follow-up game (the "men in white coats" have been working on it for three years already.)

Preteens love it. Parents sleep sound knowing their offspring are learning the virtues of "strategy, loyalty and friendship" in a mixed social environment. In fact the only noise you can hear in Pokemonland is the sound of a million cash tills ringing.

CRAZES THOUGHOUT THE AGES

Toys your gran bought

Hula hoops, marbles, yo-yos, conkers, spinning tops, skipping ropes. All harmless, unsophisticated obsessions from the charming Good Old Days. Cheap and easy to play.

Toys your mum bought

Barbie, Action Man, Ninja Mutant Turtles, Lego. All cash cows in their day, but still considered relatively harmless obsessions for children with imaginations.

Toys your kids buy

Beani Babies, Furby, Tamagotchi, Teletubbies, Lara Croft and Buzz Lightyear. Mostly tabloid hate figures, usually described as "unhealthy", "violent" and "anti-social".