Poke-News

4Kids relayed a batch of new Pokemon news at their recent shareholders meeting. The rundown of interesting facts was:

The Pokémon 2000 movie will hit theaters July 21. The home video will be released on November 21, 2000. A “very major” celebrity will sing on the Pokémon 2000 soundtrack.

Pokémon the Third Movie (the real name is secret) will be released in summer 2001.

A Pokémon stage show will debut at Radio City Music Hall and embark on a 40-city tour sometime before the third Pokémon movie.

56 new Pokémon “Gold and Silver” episodes will air on Kids WB starting September 2000.

7 million home videos of the first Pokémon movie have sold in the U.S. since March 20, 2000. Pokémon vitamins now outsell Flintstones vitamins. Kellogg’s Pokémon cereal is the top selling cereal in Kellogg’s history.

The first Pokémon movie is showing in 60 countries. It broke the all-time box office record in Israel.

Pokémon was broadly introduced to Europe only 7 months ago. Since then, 70% of German children have purchased a Pokémon product. There are more Pokémon cards per child in Germany than in any other country, including the U.S. and Japan.

4Kids also spoke out about several upcoming animated series. 4Kids has purchased Tama and Friends, a precursor to Hello Kitty. Network negotiations are not complete, but which network will show it will be named soon. It has been described as another series with many cute characters. Toonzone stated after seeing short segments, “fairly entertaining, though the theme song was annoying.” 4Kids and Daiwon of Korea have teamed up to produce 26 episodes of Cubix, a mecha action CGI show that takes place in the year 2040. The story was described as, “Everyone on Earth owns a robot, which can be programmed to be good or evil, according to the tendencies of its human master. Aliens hide a special energy force in one particular robot owned by a young boy. This energy source gives the robot extraordinary powers. The show will feature two running, intertwining plot devices: good (the boy and his robot) vs. evil, and the aliens’ search for their lost power source.” It will be launched simultaneously in the US and Japan.

Source: Toon Zone