In February 1996, a small Japanese games developer released Pokémon Red and Green for the Game Boy: A role-playing game in which players collected and battled fantastical creatures called Pokémon, and were told, simply, to catch them all.
Three decades on, Pokémon is now the highest-grossing media franchise in history, ahead of major intellectual properties including Hello Kitty, Star Wars, and Marvel. The Pokémon Company's most recent fiscal year produced record revenues of US$2.9 billion (¥410.9 billion), a 38% increase YoY.
Across licensed merchandise, retail sales have crossed US$103 billion since the franchise launched, with over 75 billion trading cards printed across 16 languages. In its lifetime, the brand has generated a staggering US$150 billion in revenue.
"It's an IP that is truly transmedia, long before other brands were attempting it," says Brien Holman, CCO and co-founder of We Are Royale. "Each aspect of the franchise serves its own purpose and fanbase. And it was built to create a feedback loop, which is in no small part why it's so successful in each pillar.
Most IP development follows what Anthony Baker, managing director, Japan, at RGA, calls a sequential model. "Build an audience on one platform, prove it works, then expand," he says. "Pokémon was architected from the start as a simultaneous multi-surface system."
Baker points to the speed of Pokémon's original rollout. He
explains that each medium in Pokémon's original system was designed with a
distinct purpose: the anime drove awareness, the games created depth, the cards
enabled social trading, and the manga added narrative texture.
"They are not just extensions of the game, but parallel entry points into the same world," he notes. This meant that fans could discover the Pokémon ecosystem through multiple ways and find a "deeper path" into the brand world.
Focusing on world-building first and following with media platforms is a strategy that separates Pokémon from franchises built around a central character or linear plot. "For [the latter], expansion is slower, options are narrower and frequency of re-entry points harder," observes Daisy Huang, head of strategy at Omnicom Media Group Singapore.
She points to Harry Potter as a comparison, a franchise with over 600 million books sold and US$7.7 billion in global box office sales, whose expansion model has nonetheless been far more constrained.
"Whilst the world of Harry Potter does bring magic, the core attachment is still to the hero's story. Spin-offs like Fantastic Beasts have struggled to sustain momentum and rely on expanding the story rather than creating new modes of participation," she adds.
Pokémon's playbook, Huang argues, is built on a different question entirely: "It's not built on 'what happens next?' but rather 'what else can I do in this world?' And answering that question feels limitless."
A timeless appeal
Every three to four years, a new mainline game launches with a new region, new starter Pokémon, and a fresh roster of creatures to discover. A child picking up a game today has more or less the same discovery experience as one in 1996. The wonder is preserved and rebuilt from scratch throughout each generation.
"Each time you release new Pokémon you create an entry point for new players as well as a reason for lapsed players to get back into it," Holman says. "Pokémon doesn't sunset content, it adds to it. This means the Pokémon, cards and games that you've already caught stay with you and continue to be relevant with future releases."
Where most franchises segment consumers by age or lifecycle stage, Pokémon never built around their brand around a specific audience.
"Pokémon targets a universal human impulse: the desire to discover, collect, and nurture. That impulse doesn't age. The mechanical simplicity is key. The core loop is immediately legible to any age, any culture," Baker explains. “Because the IP platform supports an ever-expanding roster of characters without invalidating earlier ones, new generations of Pokémon are additive."
Huang adds a psychological dimension: "Collecting was inherent to the IP—'Gotta catch 'em all' is literally the slogan—and collecting is something humans are geared towards. Humans are wired for completion bias, where we seek to finish sets and loops. Each new addition triggers a small dopamine reward, reinforcing the desire to continue."
The core animation series, meanwhile, has remained deliberately accessible. Huang notes: "The core entry point for Pokémon, which is the animation, remains kid-friendly. It's light, optimistic, and parent-safe, making it easy to continue bringing in a new generation of children."
Huang makes her case with the latest anime series, Pokémon Horizons (see above), which amassed 120 to 130 million unique viewers: "While it keeps the front door child-friendly, it uses the rest of the franchise to give older audiences new modes of participation, so no one needs to really 'graduate' from Pokémon. One person can go from watching to collecting to playing to experiencing to spending.”
Pokémon's ability to sustain merchandise revenue across 30 years leverages both brand recognition and emotional investment. We Are Royale, which has produced Pokémon's TCG card pack campaigns across close to a dozen releases, builds CG narrative spots rather than product showcases, using each new card's character as the emotional entry point.
"Each card represents a character with personality," Holman explains. "The more we can showcase that, the more inclined players are to seek them out."
The approach draws on a model that predates modern IP marketing entirely: "That goes back to GI Joe and He-Man building Saturday morning cartoons to sell the toys. You have to tell them a story, no matter how short—and in our case, we had 15 seconds,” adds Holman.
Baker articulates the same principle from a brand equity perspective. "Most IPs rely on storylines to sustain engagement. Pokémon relies on relationships; the bond between trainer and creature. That's a much more durable foundation. They don't sell stories; they sell companions."
Huang's notes that while most franchises build around one hero, Pokémon builds around a roster. She explains: "What creates longevity for Pokémon is that fans don't build emotional attachments to the 'human' characters or even Pokémon as a species: they build them with Pikachu, Charizard, Eevee, and the list goes on for over 1,000 more. That's over 1,000 emotional entry points."
Each of those entry points, she notes, is individually portable across formats: "If you have an attachment to Pikachu, you don't need constant Pikachu stories to keep you engaged. Figurines, a hoodie, new card designs and a random Pikachu activation will do the trick."
Embedding rituals in fandom
Pokémon Centers, the physical stores modelled after the healing clinics in the games, have operated as fan pilgrimage destinations since the late 1990s. City-exclusive merchandise, immersive in-world design, and the simple fact of being inside the fictional universe have consistently driven fans to travel specifically to visit them.
This pilgrimage behaviour—the queues and travel—has a name in Japanese culture. When a brand reaches the mass, universal scale of Pokémon, we see that feeling expand into what is called aichaku (deep emotional attachment) or kyarakutaa-ai (character love).
“This genuine bond is what transforms a transaction into a pilgrimage," Baker explains, adding: "That intense devotion, which gaming culture rightly identifies as 'moe', is the secret engine of Japanese IP."
He adds: "Pokémon's genius is that this attachment isn't manufactured or shoehorned through aggressive storytelling. It's earned through one of the simplest emotional mechanics in gaming: you chose this creature, you raised it, it's yours.”
Pokémon GO Fest, the franchise's annual real-world gathering, has
been held every year since its inaugural event in Chicago's Grant Park in July
2017. The event now spans multiple cities and continents, with Tokyo, Chicago,
and Copenhagen hosting in-person events in 2026 before a global digital edition
in July.
Holman says that bringing Pokémon out into an experiential space is a natural extension of the brand as well as a sign of the times where people crave human connections.
IP that threads through media's evolution over time
When it comes to similar IPs, is Pokémon's success replicable?
Not every franchise with strong IP fundamentals can go beyond their creative appeal. Baker is measured about other brands' ability to recreate Pokémon's playbook: "When the IP is built on universal mechanics rather than specific narrative arcs, it works. Pokémon has resisted every temptation to 'mature' the franchise, darken the tone, or chase the audience that aged out. That restraint is their competitive moat."
As Holman puts it: "Pokémon has maintained control of its brand and its characters through every media evolution. The Pokémon themselves are held with extreme respect, in terms of look and personality, in and out of the different games."
Take
the character Pikachu, for example. Holman says there's no reason for the
character to change when the Pokémon Company could have simply introduced a new
character to suit a new season.
“In a way, that is what makes the Pokémon Company a timeless ecosystem. It's
literally built on its own feedback loop," he explains.
Huang argues that the franchise's limitations are largely
geographic. Pokémon travels well where its ecosystem already has roots, such as locations where anime is culturally embedded, where console and
handheld gaming culture is established, and where trading-card collecting
already has social clout.
Japan drives approximately 41% of revenue for newer products like Pokémon TCG Pocket, while the US contributes around 22%. Launched in 2024, the mobile card-collecting app had surpassed $1.3 billion in revenue in its first 12 months alone.
Notably, South Korea, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia are emerging as the franchise's next growth corridor as these are markets where anime penetration is high and mobile gaming habits align closely with Pokémon GO and TCG Pocket's formats.
Meanwhile, markets with weaker anime penetration, strong local IP ecosystems, or low console penetration such as parts of Europe, remain harder to crack.
"Pokémon's success truly comes from its full ecosystem. Markets that don't have existing roots to fully embrace that ecosystem may see Pokémon as just another piece of content," she adds.
Still, thirty years in, the brand's ecosystem is still expanding. The TCG Live digital platform opened what Holman calls "yet another touchpoint in the brand”. And somewhere right now, an eight-year-old is choosing their first starter Pokémon, entering an immersive, mythical world like the generations before them.
