Pokémon to Celebrate Its 25th Anniversary with New Merch, Retro Cards, and… Katy Perry?

I didn’t have “Pokémon 25th anniversary making me starkly aware of my mortality” on my 2021 bingo card, but here we are. The series, which began in 1996 with the Japanese release of Pocket Monsters: Red and Green, has now been around for a quarter century and is beginning its celebration with a rollout of products and promises of what’s to come over the year.

The announcements kicked off properly with the release of a video commemorating the 25 years Pokémon has been around. Opening on a Game Boy playing the original titles, the handheld falls and knocks a Pokéball into motion which then runs through a course with highlights and landmarks from the various regions the series has been to. The course is made up of various figures, plushies, trading cards, and even videogame cartridges from over the years.

Towards the end of the video, we get a tease of a collaboration between Pokémon and Katy Perry, a pairing I couldn’t imagine if I tried as hard as inhumanly possible. A post on the Pokémon website makes reference to even more future collaborations with artists that haven’t been announced, so I’m placing bets here and now on a Migos take on the Pokérap. Just think of all the “Mewtwo!” adlibs we’d miss if this didn’t happen.