\n

In 2023, Pok\u00e9mon <\/em>is part of the fabric of our lives. It exists all around us, has for decades, and even if you\u2019re not a fan you will at least know the basic premise.<\/p>\n

They\u2019re Pok\u00e9mon<\/em>! You catch em all! They fight, they faint, they go in a little ball, there are some kids, some of them (the Pok\u00e9mon, not the kids) look like dinosaurs, some of them look like animals. You would know that much just be being alive in the 21st century<\/em>, as you would have been exposed to the series, repeatedly, everywhere from the movie theatre to the supermarket to the clothes section of a department store. <\/p>\n

Which is why it\u2019s sometimes extremely fun to look back to the times we didn\u2019t<\/em> all know about Pok\u00e9mon<\/em>, and there are few examples better to illustrate this period of human history than this commercial (uploaded by Dinosaur Dracula, who found it on an old VHS<\/a><\/span>), made for the US market in 1999 for the Pok\u00e9mon <\/em>trading card game\u2019s launch in the market (the first video games, meanwhile, had only just been released in the US in late 1998):<\/p>\n