It was like collecting
Panini football cards in the 1980s
- only more expensive.
Playground scuffles over trades gone bad became frequent as Pokemon fever gripped the
nation.
The trading cards grew out of the Pokemon Game Boy video game, in which
a boy had to capture and train a team of fighting monsters. The odd name was a Japanese abbreviation of 'pocket monsters'.
Each card starred a different monster, and you had to 'catch 'em
all'.