Pokémon store plunged into chaos over 30th anniversary Pikachu plush

February 27th marked Pokémon’s 30th birthday, and The Pokémon Company revealed a bunch of new merch to mark the occasion, including a black and white, original Game Boy-inspired Pikachu plush. The rush to grab one of these limited-time exclusive plushies hit one particular Poké Center in Japan particularly hard, with one onlooker describing the chaos as “total war.” User aeroflotlove shared a video of the commotion at the Tokyo Bay Poké Center on X, along with their account of the ensuing panicked attempts to snag the limited-edition stuffed Pikachu (machine translated from Japanese).

“There were no tickets or lines, so I turned around at 10 a.m., and there was a lot of people rushing into the store from all the entrances, pushing each other, fighting, screaming, children crying because they were being hit by other customers, it was total war.” Chris Explorer, a content creator living in Japan, captured a different angle of the bedlam from outside the Tokyo Bay store.

Japan, Tokyo Bay

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