Pokémon Comes to School

By Bruce S. Cooper and Sheree T. Speakman

Marketing products to children has reached a new high, as Pokémon (short for Pocket Monster) has expanded from a Japanese Nintendo video game; to trading, playing, and collectible cards; to a highly successful film, worth upwards of $100 million in revenues; to T-shirts and other children's merchandise peddled by a variety of stores and businesses. It's all pitched to the nation's youngest consumers (even kindergartners), who now command millions in sales through the effort of parents to please their kids.

For those not in the know, Pokémon is a Japanese cast of monster characters that can be collected as color cards sold for about $3.99 for a set of five. Cards accrue value by the rarity of certain figures: A single card showing Hitmonlee, for example, as a collector's item, is worth $10 on the trading market, and a few of the rarest species have sold for as much as $100 or more. The goal, in part, is to accumulate all 151 of the monster cards, an effort reminiscent of collecting baseball cards.

Pokémon is having fascinating, complex effects on the education of children and, potentially, on their schools: some good, some bad. Elementary school administrators and teachers are complaining, for example, that Pokémon cards are creating a number of problems: First, collecting the cards has an element of gambling to it (a kiddy Lotto) since, when buying packets of the Pokémon cards, children are not sure which characters are included. Some cards are much more valuable (rarer) than others, tempting kids to keep buying more packages in the hope of landing the scarcest...