Pokémon Company Apologizes After Van Gogh Collaboration Causes Scalping Mayhem

You’d think a Pikachu in a grey felt hat wouldn’t be able to spark crowd-swelling hysteria, but if the last few years have proven anything, Pokémon has developed a concerning relationship with speculative markets that can turn even the most humble cross-promotional event into an absolute headache. Or maybe more of an earache, in this instance.

Last week the Pokémon Company launched a special collaboration initiative with the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, intended to promote the museum’s 50th anniversary with a new exhibit mashing up several Pokémon into some of the artist’s most iconic works and highlighting his own interest in Japanese art and culture. Running through early January 2024 at the Van Gogh Museum, Pokémon x Van Gogh Museum features a series of educational events and learning exercises at the Museum beyond the exhibit… and, of course, tie-in merchandise, including a limited-edition promo card for the Pokémon Trading Card Game featuring art of Pikachu inspired by Van Gogh’s Self-Portrait in Grey Felt Hat.

The card was made available both at the Van Gogh Museum when the collaboration launched last Thursday—for visitors who completed a special activity sheet—and then the day after, when the Pokemon x Van Gogh Museum collection debuted online at Pokémon Center stores in the U.S., Canada, and UK—with any purchase of the myriad mugs, posters, playmats, and cardsleeves festooned with the event artwork. But Pokémon fans are already well aware that any mention of exclusive merchandise in recent years, especially involving promo cards for the TCG, is the herald of chaos, and a Vincent Van Gogh Pikachu was no exception.

At the Van Gogh Museum, visitors and staff found themselves immediately overwhelmed with surges of customers looking to get their hands on merchandise and the promotional card—crowds especially intent on capitalizing on the extremely high aftermarket demand for limited-time Pokémon merchandise, as social media became flooded with video of unruly crowds picking apart displays for whatever was left. Online, the Pokémon x Van Gogh Museum collection sold out almost immediately as it went live in the U.S. and Canada, while on the UK Pokémon Center site—the only official Pokémon storefront in all of Europe—the collection largely sold out before it even went live, with a combination of resellers and eager buyers altering links from the earlier U.S. and Canadian activation to purchase stock before it was officially released. Now, both the Pikachu promo card and merchandise for the collection are going for huge markups on sites like eBay, with the card in particular reaching absurd asking prices of several hundred dollars:

Naturally, fans were not pleased—either because they couldn’t get the merch or promo card, or out of embarrassment for the absolute frenzy Pokémon had inadvertently unleashed on an unexpecting Dutch art museum. The Pokémon Company took to X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, this past Friday to address the immediate selling out of the Pokémon x Van Gogh Museum collection, but not the chaos that led to it in the first place.

“Due to overwhelming demand, all our products from this collection have sold out. We understand this is disappointing to many who were looking to our official email and social media channels for guidance on how and when to purchase,” the statement reads in part. “We are actively working on ways to provide more ‘Pikachu with Grey Felt Hat’ promo cards for fans shopping at Pokémon Center in the future. Details will be released at a later date.”

The Pokémon x Van Gogh Museum is meant to run until January 7, and it remains to be seen if more of the merchandise will be made available again online. At the Van Gogh Museum, merchandise remains sold out, with restrictions on access to the promotional card in place in an attempt to limit it to people actually engaging with the museum’s Pokémon activities. The franchise causing its own kind of speculatory chaos is not surprising at this point—Pokémon’s vast appeal and reach across generations of audiences has always primed it for an eager fanbase, especially in collaborations with an appeal as broad as one of the most famous painters in history. But in more recent years that eagerness has been undercut by an increase in perceived value in Pokémon merchandise, especially trading card releases, in the aftermarket.

Amplified by the pandemic bolstering speculatory markets and a renewed interest in nostalgic past times, high profile sets for the TCG such as the 25th anniversary collection or last month’s Scarlet and Violet 151—themed around the original 151 Pokémon seen in Pokémon Red, Blue, Green, and Yellow’s Kanto region—have seen a feast and famine of immediate sellouts, over-printing, and in some cases literal brawls as resellers attempt to corner the market on lucrative cards and promos. The chaos at the Van Gogh Museum last week has made it clear that the Pokémon Company is still struggling to stamp out this resurgent corner of the Pokémon community—and it’s ultimately going to a pay a price well beyond sold out merchandise and angry fans if this continues to become the public perception of any collaboration with the franchise.

Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.

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