Content area
Full Text
Justin Goodarzi couldn't have been happier if he was in line for a brand new, crisp $50 bill.
The Pokemon Charizard card was just as good.
A friend in his third-grade class at Wasco School near St. Charles promised to give him one the next day at school.
"He was just very excited," said his mom, Jane. "It was the last thing he said when he went to bed, and the first thing he said when he woke up."
Alas, the deal was too good to be true.
But the 8-year-old isn't the only youngster going to bed and waking up thinking Pokemon, the Japanese game, television cartoon and trading card phenomenon from which few preteen households are exempt.
Parents have become arbiters of Pokemon deals and an avocation that steals time away from bike riding and baseball.
School playgrounds have become offices for pint-sized Pokemon day traders.
And the holidays, a Pokemon feature movie, new cards, and 100 new Pokemon characters, are right around the corner.
"In terms of frenzy, it's right up there at the hottest point of Beanie Babies," said Douglas Kale, managing editor of Dallas-based Beckett Publications, which this summer started up a monthly Pokemon magazine. "There is nothing hotter. Pokemon has eclipsed all other toys on the market."
School officials and parents now find themselves dealing with the fallout.
"We were concerned because that's all they wanted to do," said Naperville's Jacquie Stone of her two Pokey-crazed kids, Jake, 8, and Sam, 5.
Even her youngest, at 2 1/2, is starting to recite Pokemon names.
"It got to the point where they were (trading cards) all day, every day," she said.
She's now limited them to 15 to 20 minutes of trading.
"Then they have to do something active, like ride their bikes or play basketball," Stone said.
Schools, meanwhile, are starting to ban the Pokemon character cards, which have names like Gyarados, Weedle, Diglett, Pikachu and Bulbasaur.
Some rare cards, like a fire-breathing Charizard with a...