Pokemon Turns Playground Into a Mini-Wall Street

Fifty dollars, gone. Blown on a single schoolyard transaction, conducted clandestinely, behind the soccer field bleachers during lunch.

His dad was stunned and furious. Another wad of bar mitzvah money blown on a pack of cardboard trading cards depicting mythical creatures with comical names.

“But, Dad, you don’t understand,” the West Los Angeles seventh-grader pleaded as he cracked open a binder bulging with Pokemon cards and pulled out the bounty from his latest score.

“It’s Charizard, dad! I got Charizard!”

It is not a new phenomenon, this juvenile obsession with collecting stuff. Remember Pogs and Beanie Babies? The baseball trading cards of our youth?

But this newest element of the year-old Pokemon craze has caught some parents and teachers by surprise this fall. Sweeping across campuses with such ferocity, its mercenary aspect has turned carefree little boys into cutthroat junior day traders. So fourth-graders show up at school with wads of cash stuffed in their pockets, and second-graders are reduced to tears because older, savvier boys tricked them into parting with precious cards.

Based on a Japanese video game and television show, the Pokemon craze involves trading cards portraying 150 “pocket monsters” with names like Pikachu, Alakazam and Weedle. Each has a unique combination of fighting skills.

The cards have been banned from some Southern California classrooms, but that hasn’t put a dent in their popularity.

“I had a long lecture with my students . . . told them I was not going to allow the cards in class,” said Grace Jones, a fifth-grade teacher at Florence Griffith Joyner Elementary in South Los Angeles.

“Then, I’m sending in my class orders for Scholastic Books last week, and there they are--about 10 kids ordering Pokemon cards . . . kids who could have been ordering books.”

Many parents consider the trading harmless, helpful even. It can help teach negotiating tactics, they say. And children’s reading and math skills may improve, as they study the cards to calculate their value.

It can even improve social standing: Even unpopular kids have a shot at the in-crowd if they can produce the right Pokemon cards.

But other parents scoff at that notion.

“I think it’s a crackup that they can memorize the names of these 150 [Pokemon] characters, but they fail their weekly spelling tests,” says Dolores Cardenas, an East Los Angeles mother of three, whose second-grade son sports his own tiny collection of Pokemon cards.

And I wonder what, really, the trading frenzy is teaching our kids . . . other than the economic reality that the value of an item is dictated not by what it means to you, but by how badly someone else wants it, and how much they’re willing to pay.

That’s a lesson parents teach through their own behavior, says Los Angeles psychologist Robert Butterworth, whose 14-year-old son just recovered from a months-long Pokemon obsession.

“Remember all of us lining up for [Tickle Me] Elmos, for Furbys, for Nintendo 64? We get things not because they’re fun or cute or make nice gifts, but because everybody wants them. It’s valuable because it’s hard to get.”

The most coveted Pokemon cards are the ones that rarely show up in packets sold over the counter. In fact, a group of parents in San Diego and New York is suing Pokemon’s creators, claiming that the lust for the rare cards has turned children into gambling addicts, willing to lie, steal and cheat to protect their investment and hide their obsession.

“What bothers me in this whole thing is the kids don’t seem to be having much fun. There’s not much ‘play’ involved,” Butterworth said. “It’s the greed, the lust to acquire that keeps them going.”

*

Seven-year-old Adam Cardenas’ collection of Pokemon cards is pitifully puny by suburban standards. He has six cards . . . wrinkly, faded, featuring run-of-the mill characters. Some he found, some are castoffs he got from friends.

“But he treasures those six cards like they’re really special,” says his mom, Dolores. “And if it’s that important to him, if he chooses to spend his birthday money or what he earns doing chores on them, I’m not going to deny him that.”

But neither will she supply him with money to feed his passion, or compete with other buyers, who stand in line for hours for a crack at the most popular cards.

“I hear on talk radio from these parents who spend $1,000 [on Pokemon cards], and they’re proud of it. . . . And I think of how many pairs of shoes that money could buy.”

*

Sandy Banks’ column is published on Sundays and Tuesdays. Her e-mail address is sandy.banks@latimes.com.