Marketing Monsters Are Child's Play
Sydney Morning Herald
Saturday November 20, 1999
On one side are Woody and Buzz. On the other side, Ash and Pikachu. The battle between them will rage throughout the summer.
And although the short-term struggle is likely to go to Woody, backed by the Disney empire, there's no doubt the war for children's hearts and parents' dollars will ultimately be won by Pikachu, backed by Japanese ingenuity and US marketing. At century's end, Disney finds itself in the unlikely position of underdog.
Woody and Buzz are the heroes of Toy Story 2, which opens in our cinemas on December 2. Ash and Pikachu are the heroes of Poke{AAC}mon:The First Movie, which opens on December 16.
Toy Story 2 is a brilliant piece of computer animation driven by a witty script that will delight adults even more than kids. Its predecessor earned $13 million at the Australian box office in 1996 and sold 500,000 copies when it went to video. Its success is guaranteed, along with big sales for the plastic figurines and the Playstation computer game already in toy shops (manufacturers and retailers having learnt from their mistake last time in not providing enough talking Woody dolls and Buzz Lightyear action figures to meet demand).
Poke{AAC}mon: The First Movie has been reviewed thus by Time's film critic: ``It lacks visual wit and expressiveness of movement. It has no pace or even much of a pulse." The film is basically an extension of the amateurish cartoon series shown every morning on the Ten network.
But negative reviews and parental scepticism won't matter a bit, because this is not a movie in the usual sense. It's a collectible just a tiny element in a huge retailing scheme that operates under the slogan ``Gotta catch 'em all". The ``'em" in that phrase is supposed to refer to 151 colourful creatures called Poke{AAC}mon (pocket monsters), but it might equally refer to the company's plan for every child aged between six and 16. In America, Poke{AAC}mon is known as ``kiddie crack" (cocaine).
It began as a video game devised in the mid-'90s by a Japanese nerd named Satoshi Tajiri, who created a story about a 10-year-old boy called Ash with a squeaking pet called Pikachu, who travels around collecting other monsters and training them to fight monsters trained by other kids. Nintendo adapted the game for Gameboy and Nintendo 64 machines, and so far this year Australians have bought 400,000 Gameboys at $49.95 each.
In America, Poke{AAC}mon expanded into an infinite variety of collectible toys, most controversially a card-swapping game that has been accused of making children gambling addicts, as they become desperate to ``catch 'em all". So far this year 1.3 million of the card ``starter packs" have been sold in Australia (at $16.95), and some schools have banned the cards from playgrounds.
So the film has a captive audience. On its first weekend in America, it earned $US52million ($81million), the most successful opening for any animated film in history. Burger King outlets ran out of the Poke{AAC}mon toys they were giving away as part of a promotion for the film.
In Australia, the tie-in is with Pizza Hut, which has stocked up on a mere half a million Poke{AAC}mon plastic jigsaws.
It would be best to warn the kids now that they might have to settle for a Woody figure from McDonald's this summer, and wait till next year for their 151st Poke{AAC}mon.
© 1999 Sydney Morning Herald