Pokemon Black and White mall tour

During February and March, mall tours promoting Pokemon Black and White are being held at various shopping centers across the U.S. in anticipation of the games’ release on March 6th. This weekend, the tour hit a mall not too far from me in Arcadia, CA. Being the hopeless Pokemon fan than I am, I of course had to go check it out…

Reshiram and Zekrom welcome visitors!

Couldn’t resist taking this picture ^^

The tour started at 10am, though there were already people lined up when my friend and I arrived around 9:30am. Besides buying merchandise at the Pokemon Center booth, the tour was completely free and was conducted as a “stamp rally.” Everyone participating received a pamphlet that had information and images about the games, as well as a page where they would need to get a total of five stamps from booths set up at different locations in the mall. Once they got all five stamps, they could spin a wheel and get a free prize.

A page in the pamphlet about some of the new pokemon

The page that needed to be stamped (with my completed stamps)

At each of the five stamp rally booths, there was also a certain Pokemon BW-related activity going on:

Information Booth

The booth most people started with to pick up their pamphlet and get their first stamp. Besides finding out information about the tour, this booth also gave out movie tickets for the dubbed version of the 13th Pokemon movie being screened at a theater in the mall. Since I’d already seen a fansubbed version of the movie (and I haven’t liked the dub since they changed the voices several years ago), I didn’t care to see it. I heard that the tickets ran out quickly and that you could exchange your ticket stub for a large promo trading card with Celebi and Zorua on it. I would have gotten a ticket just for the trading card but I realized too late XD

Activity Zone

The Activity Zone booth had a few events going on. At various intervals throughout the day, one of the three new starter pokemon (or to be precise, someone in a costume XD) would make an appearance and you could get your picture taken with them. You could also get your picture taken by a staff member against a green background and then go online and imprint the picture on a few different Pokemon backgrounds.

Backgrounds you could get your photo imprinted on

I didn’t care to do any of the photo-related things, and there was supposed to be something going on with the TV screen at this booth, but I didn’t see anything when I was there.

Nothing on the TV, just people lounging around playing Pokemon on their DS

The main attraction here was being able to spin the wheel for a free prize after you got all five stamps, which I’ll get to later on.

GameStop

For some odd reason there were two GameStop stores at this mall but they were both giving away the same stamp.

The event going on at this booth was a Celebi you can download into any of your fourth generation games (Diamond, Pearl, Platinum, Heart Gold, Soul Silver) via wireless Mystery Gift. If this Celebi is transferred into Heart Gold or Soul Silver, you’ll be able to access a battle with Team Rocket’s boss Giovanni. And if the Celebi is later transferred into your copy of Black or White, you’ll be able to get Zorua. It was funny because when I was getting the download, hardly anyone else knew how to do it. I had to show a few people how to use Mystery Gift in their games and get the Celebi. Apparently not as many people as I thought are experienced in getting similar Pokemon downloads from stores like GameStop and Toys R Us.

Game Demo

The fourth booth I went to was letting people play demos of the English versions of Black and White.

View of the game demo booth from the 2nd floor

The line was very long, and since I’ve already played through my Japanese copy of Black, I didn’t feel much of a need to try a demo of the English version. So I just got my stamp here and moved on. I wonder if they’ll still have this booth at the tours that will be held after the games come out on March 6th. Can’t imagine it’d attract a lot of attention then ~_^

Liked the design on this side of the booth

Pokemon Center

This was the most popular booth since it was the place where you could buy exclusive Pokemon BW merchandise!

The line was very long because each person was taking the time to pick out what they wanted to buy and then had to wait until their payment transaction by cash or credit card was completed. Something went wrong with the credit card machine right when it was my turn to pay, but thankfully I had just enough cash to pay for what I bought.

People waiting in line to buy their poke-loot

Plushies!

And more plushies!

View of the Pokemon Center booth from the 2nd floor

The photos below are the signs that showed all the available things to buy – T-shirts, plushies, and figures.

Unfortunately the T-shirts were all youth sizes that wouldn’t fit me (c’mon, they must know by now that adults want Pokemon shirts too XP) So I instead blew my money on plushies and figures.

My haul: plushies of Tepig, Oshawott, and Snivey…

…and figures of Reshiram, Zekrom, Pikachu, Zorua, and Zoroak (along with the styluses I won later)

Spin the Wheel

After getting the five stamps, my friend and I headed back to the Activity Zone to spin the wheel that would determine which free prize we would get. We soon found out that the staff wasn’t quite prepared for the amount of people that showed up at the tour – first we waited in an incredibly long line to get a wristband that would let us spin the wheel at a certain time. After waiting for who knows how long, we realized that they scrapped that idea and just had everyone wait in line to spin the wheel right away (instead of wristbands, they just stamped our hand to show who already got to spin). In order to prevent blocking traffic in the mall, we then ended up waiting in another line outside. Luckily we were in the parking structure but unlucky people at the end of the line weren’t covered when it started raining! After about an hour, it was finally our turn to spin.

The prizes all featured Tepig, Oshawott, and Snivey – a stylus with one of the three on it, a patch of one of them, a phone charm with all three of them, or a free plushie of one of them. Since I already bought all three plushies, and I had no use for a patch or stylus, I really wanted the phone charm. But alas, I won a stylus and so did my friend (she gave me hers =P) A little boy waiting in line next to me wanted to trade his Tepig stylus for my Oshawott one, which I did XD

Took one final photo with the big Reshiram and Zekrom blow-up dolls XD

———-

To sum up my thoughts, the tour was fun and a fantastic way to promote what’s probably the most unique generation of Pokemon. It still amazes me that even after all these years, Pokemon is still so popular with such a variety of ages, and even an event like this would draw in more people than anticipated. I had brought my DS to perhaps battle people (and show off my Japanese copy of Black, though most people were too engrossed in their own DS to notice XD) but by the time I was done getting all the stamps and waiting in lines, I was pretty much spent. There were a few Pokemon cosplayers at the tour, but not many. There were lots of families with kids, groups of teenagers, and of course older, veteran fans like me. My only complaints about the tour was a slight lack of organization which resulted in very long lines (and probably lack of any activity with that TV in the Activity Zone), and I also would have liked merchandise that featured a better variety of the new Pokemon. I know they’re important and all, but the three starters and two version mascots were kinda hogging the spotlight.

Anyway, the last Pokemon event I went to was almost four years ago, so it was great having this one. I hope there will be further events for this incredible franchise that I can go to ^^