PkmnCards

Pokémon TCG Card Search / Database

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  1. TwylisAmbassador

    I think it’s worth considering another possibility — Sandstorm was a collection of repurposed Jamboree cards alongside newly created but extremely last-minute phoned-in cards to pad out the set and make it relevant to Gen 3.

    I don’t think this Slakoth originated from Jamboree — I can’t see WotC deciding to make a card this weak unless they had intended it to evolve into something amazing, like Magikarp, but Magikarp has never had this particular drawback before. On the other hand, the previous Slakoth *did* have this same drawback on Slack Off, and the Slaking from the same set had this drawback on Critical Move.

    The impression I get from Jamboree was that it was intended to assert Wizards’ (perceived) superior card-making competence. Weird cards with unprecedented gimmicks or things that seem suspiciously overtuned are more likely suspects here — I don’t think forgettable nothing cards are particularly likely to have come from the Wizards side.

  2. Ambassador

    This is one of several cards in this set which came out in the EN TCG (Sept 2003) prior to the JP TCG (Gift Box, Nov 2003) and seems off. Sure, it fits the flavor text, but it’s been saddled with an attack that’s essentially set up to do an average of 5 damage, despite having no payoff here in terms of getting more HP than the other Slakoth (i.e. RS Slakoth) already available in the format, and having the same retreat as that card.

    Alongside its evolution into the SS Vigoroth, one of the most phoned-in Pokémon cards you might ever see in your life, and the *lack* of a Slaking for these two to evolve into, they’d be contenders for cards I’d now suspect of having originally been Jamboree cards – i.e., cards designed by WOTC and then reappropriated for Sandstorm¹. Since these are Gen 3 Pokémon, maybe it feels less likely, but there really isn’t anything stopping the possibility that these were originally different Pokémon and that PCL/PUSA/NOA swapped them out to cover their…

  4. Ambassador

    Eevee showed up in Jungle (the second set of the original TCG block), Neo Discovery (the second set of the Neo block), Aquapolis (the second set of the e-Card block), and Sandstorm (the second set of the EX block). I used to think this was a deliberate trope, but it’s a EN-only point of trivia that doesn’t hold up well against the original sets – the card we know as AQ Eevee showed up in the *third* JP e-Card set, and this card doesn’t show up until the fourth or fifth set¹ of the JP Generation 3 TCG.

    Either way, it falls apart in the DP era for both the EN and JP edition, with Eevee taking a few extra sets to show up in that block.

    ¹ Chronologically fourth, but most lists on pokemon-card.com listed ADV ex1 after the rest of the regular ADV sets, pushing it to the fifth slot.

  5. AmbassadorAmbassador

    I did end up finding this pdf online – https://archive.is/nUZy7 – that documented the pull rate for Pokémon 𝒆𝒙 at 1 in 3 for RS and Sandstorm, and then jumps to 1 in 12 for most of the rest of the era. That is documents Holon Phantoms heightening the pull rate to 1 in 36 matches my memory of a lot of people complaining about it being harder to pull them (but it’s not surprising they did what they did, given the set only has 3 Pokémon 𝒆𝒙).

  6. TwylisAmbassador

    My knee-jerk response is that making it reliant on technology would make it too prone to becoming inaccessible over time, but at the same time, having a QR code type thing on the cards alongside a dedicated Pokedex app to “scan” the pokemon for info the same way the anime characters do would be incredibly cool. Could also include way more info that way.

  10. AmbassadorTwylis

    It’s definitely a layout problem. Aesthetically, the EN game seems to have stumbled on something that looked really nice with the Base–neo cards allocating a vertical chunk of the card to the dex entry, but I think the JP game (and subsequent EN templates) have been slow to adapt it because it doesn’t make any sense to prioritize that much of the card’s space from the functional, TCG as a game, perspective¹. On the other hand, you’re exactly right that they do need to be there in a functional sense, where functional means less about the game more about the branding of these cards, etc.

    My pitch would unironically be to bring back something akin to the e-Reader in terms of a way to digitally interact with these cards. I can see it being unpopular because it might feel gimmicky, but what else was the e-Reader but a prototype of QR codes and other optical-encoding tech we’ve basically mastered at this point? I think if it’s done right, adding a non-proprietary tech like a QR code…

  11. TwylisAmbassador

    I have mixed feelings on dex entries on cards. Visually, they’re kinda terrible, stuffing all this tiny text in the corner and visually clashing with the relative simplicity of everywhere else.

    But functionally, they’re important. Many people, particularly kids, collect cards without necessarily playing the video games. For them, the cards become the main exposure to a pokemon’s “lore”, which is often interesting or tied into the design in a significant way.

    But at the same time, most kids have internet now, and can easily access that same info from Bulbapedia or whatever. And even if they didn’t — are they even reading the cards anyway? I don’t know, but they certainly can’t with no entry at all.

    I do think part of the issue is the layout. Dex entries that end up wider and limited to two lines instead of three are a lot more pleasant to look at and read than cases like this one. There’s a lot of flexible negative space there – there’s no need to squish it all the way they…

  12. DaneeBound

    We know this, because the illustrator of the manga—Satoshi Yamamoto—has said so himself on the manga’s official blog back in 2007:
    Quote: 「サキは、ポケモンカードゲームのロケット団幹部(かんぶ)がベースですが、オウカとチャクラは、まったくのオリジナルキャラ。」
    Translated: “[Sird] is based on the [Rocket’s Admin.] from the Pokémon card game, but [Orm] and [Carr] are completely original characters.”

  13. TwylisAmbassador

    I think the increasing focus on Gen 1 nostalgia starting in Gen 6 is definitely a factor here too, because that has so much overlap going on with terms. Every Gen 1 pokemon is *also* a Kanto pokemon (in the “in the Kanto Pokedex” sense), so you can use the terms interchangeably there with no real problem. Because they’re also the generation of pokemon that get referred to as a distinct group most frequently, it allows that interchangeability to get very normalized.

    TPC(i?) worsened the issue, likely because they want region names to be more at the forefront of people’s minds than generation classifications — especially in cases like LGPE, whose status as a gen 7 game was a bit controversial sometimes due to being on a new console. Regional variants obviously made them even more inclined to make sure fans knew the names of regions and regarded pokemon with regions in mind.

    The Pokemon of the Year poll from 2020 is probably the highest-profile case of this…

  14. AmbassadorAisling

    Yeah I completely dipped on this franchise during Gen 5, and I think that’s representative of a sizeable portion of older fans. As much as people bemoan what Gen 6 did in terms of “Kanto pandering”, it felt less like that and more “oh, hey, they finally did a handheld 3D game! I get to see my old favs in 3D at an affordable pricetag” and we came back, speaking at least for myself, expected to continue exactly where things were left off. It’s kind of crazy to realize how in the span of only a few years an entirely new group of fans came in and introduced this entirely new worldview/terminology/topics of discussion that often feels wholly incompatible with prior fanspace convo and a continued point of friction. I’m sure some of that can be attributed to generational differences, some of that can also be attributed to very different direction in philosophy in the worldbuilding of the games themselves.. I’d also point to a divergence in how the games are localized? BW have the unfortunate…

  15. AislingAmbassador

    There are two things I can see being the cause of this. 1 is Unova’s dex being exclusively “Unova” Pokémon until the post game. Or, more likely, it is probably the regional variants. We didn’t really have adjectival forms of Pokémon regions until that happened, and while it was only Kantonian and Alolan in Sun/Moon, the other names sort of spiraled from there. My friend group has gotten into arguments over whether Melmetal should be considered a Kanto mon or not because of Let’s Go so these arguments can get pretty silly.

    I’ve always seen the Safari Zone as a topic on this discussion though. In most games, the Safari Zone features Pokémon not native to that region. So I feel like calling Tauros a Kantonian Pokémon is inherently false. And yet everyone would call you crazy if you referred to them as Johtonian Tauros

  17. Ambassador

    This card has the wrong Pokédex entry. The entry of this card’s Japanese counterpart comes from Pocket Monsters Y (and/or BDSP), rather than the respectively PLA entry. I suspect the reason for the slip-up is that this is effectively an alt art of ASR Cyndaquil, whose Japanese counterpart did use the PLA Pokédex entry.

    I suspect this kind of mix-up happens semi-often. Particularly during the BDSP/PLA-adjacent block of TCG sets, I noticed that it didn’t feel like there was any great rhyme or reason as to which games entries were being taken from. Like, you’d figure any Pokémon that was in PLA would take its PLA entry, or else any Pokémon in BDSP would take their BDSP entry, but it all feels a bit scattershot (even in the JP edition).

    I honestly don’t have much regard for the inclusion of Pokédex entries on the cards themselves – their absence during the e-Card/ADV/PCG era went unnoticed by me, and their Papyrus-looking return in the DP era made me less than excited to see…

  19. AmbassadorDaneeBound

    For some reason, I remember the old conventional wisdom being the reverse, but for my lack of ability to figure out when Pokémon Special chapter 267 was first published, it’s easy to say and harder to prove. Nonetheless, with the precedent set by Imposter Professor Oak and other incidentals in both these media, I feel like in either case you can’t dismiss the idea that both could actually be inspired from a rejected character concept art or otherwise, vs. a case of the manga being derivative of the TCG or vice versa.

🗳 Sets / see all →

👁‍🗨 Comments / images

Slakoth · Sandstorm (SS) #80
Cacnea · Sandstorm (SS) #57
Eevee · Sandstorm (SS) #63
Aerodactyl ex · Sandstorm (SS) #94
Cyndaquil · Sword & Shield Promos #SWSH221
Snorlax · Lost Origin (LOR) #143
Wigglytuff · Jungle (JU) #16
Rocket’s Admin. · Team Rocket Returns (TR) #86
Slugma · Neo Revelation (N3) #53
Jirachi · Vivid Voltage (VIV) #119
Riolu · Ultra Prism (UPR) #SV21