A Parent Takes A Poke At Pokemon -- Theater's Promotion Passed Kids Over, He Protests

When it comes to Pokemon, Artie Kelly says, the thrill is gone. Not an unusual sentiment, to be sure. But Kelly's disillusionment isn't because of the game and cartoon phenomenon's tight clutch on his three children.

His problem is with Lewis & Clark Cinemas; Warner Bros. Pictures; Loews Cineplex; and Sportscards, Supplies and Dolls Popular Collectibles (SSND). Kelly and other SeaTac-area parents feel all of them had a role in preventing kids from getting free collector's cards that should have come with their tickets for the animated feature "Pokemon the First Movie."

"Pokemon" opened nationwide on Wednesday, but by the time Kelly and his kids got to Lewis & Clark that night, the theater had run out of the cards.

That's because earlier that day, the theater allowed a collectibles broker to buy $4,500 worth of movie tickets, making off with 1,000 cards.

When Kelly found this out from talking to theater employees, he couldn't believe it. "If I was the manager of the theater, I wouldn't even question it. I would just say no. So I blame him. I blame the card broker who wanted to profit on kids' stuff. I blame Warner Brothers for not setting up regulations. And the ones who suffer for it are the kids."

"Pokemon" is short for pocket monsters, 151 characters in a Nintendo Game Boy game that players capture, train and use to battle for other characters. Worldwide sales for all "Pokemon" related merchandise will hit $6 billion this year. In Japan, the "Pokemon" phenomenon made the movie a major hit when it was released. Here, the movie raked in $10 million on its opening day, almost double the success of "The Lion King," the previous box-office record holder for animated features.

That makes any "Pokemon" items, movie-related and otherwise, a hot commodity among collectible brokers such as those at SSND. As part of the movie's American opening, a limited number of baseball-style cards have been given away at theater box offices at the rate of one card per movie ticket purchased. No purchase limits were set.

That means Steven Fenster, the SSND broker who purchased the movie tickets to get the cards, didn't do anything legally wrong, said Marc Pascucci, senior vice president of marketing at Loews Cineplex United States in New York City.

"Although this is a highly unusual situation, the manager did the right thing in accommodating the customer," Pascucci explained, speaking on behalf of theater management. "It wasn't our intention to disappoint a lot of little kids, but technically we had a promotion to fulfill and a procedure to follow."

"That's a joke," Kelly responded. "The only thing worse than doing it is not . . . admitting they were wrong. Legally, they have a way of covering themselves. But what about morally?"

Fenster stressed that he didn't intend to deprive Pokemon fans of their giveaway. "I was under the impression that there were going to be a large amount of these things available, because when the movie was released in Japan, these cards were around for weeks," Fenster said. (The cinema was allotted about 4,000 of the cards to give away, according to Pascucci.)

"The ironic thing is, now I've had (them) offered to me cheaper than what the movie tickets cost," Fenster added. Even so, he says, he doesn't regret spending the money on the tickets, though he doesn't know if he can make his $4,500 back. He says he gave the tickets away through a sports-memorabilia kiosk at Southcenter mall.

That's not enough to appease Kelly, who stood outside the box office with a sign reading, "Cineplex and Lewis & Clark sold our children's Pokemon cards to a scalper" until the police escorted him away. His efforts weren't for naught.

Warner Bros. has responded by imposing at 12-ticket limit at box offices nationwide. It has also sent 12,000 cards to the Lewis & Clark Cinemas, Pascucci said, which moviegoers can obtain by handing in their ticket stubs at the box office. Cardless movie patrons can also call 800-824-9588, where an address is given for people to send in their ticket stubs or, in absence of that, a written request for a card.

"We're going to do everything we can do to accommodate them," said Nancy Kirkpatrick, senior vice president of publicity for Warner Bros. Pictures. "That was not a good circumstance. Plus, Seattle's the home of Nintendo. You want the people in Seattle, at least, to be happy."

For Kelly, whose picketing earned him a yearlong ban from his neighborhood theater, that sentiment comes too late. "The damage is done. And all I want more than anything is an apology, not more cards."