Stadium Campaign

Stadium, November 1998 – April 1999 (5+1 sheets)

In August 1998, Nintendo released Pocket Monsters Stadium for Nintendo 64. It heralded a giant leap forward: For the first time, three-dimensional models replaced sprites to have creatures duke it out in equally multidimensional arenas.¹A feat famously made possible by future Nintendo president Satoru Iwata reverse-engineering, then porting the Red & Green battle system in the record space of just one week. Revolutionary though this was, Stadium only supported 40 of Kanto’s 151 Pokémon for use in gameplay, the remainder intended to have been unlocked through the abortive 64DD add-on. Unsurprisingly, then, this limited pool of Pokémon gave Stadium 1 the trappings of a glorified tech demo, and as a result the oddball, rough-and-ready title was quickly superseded by the much completer and more fondly remembered Stadium 2 in April 1999.²Simply known as “Pokémon Stadium” in the West. Puh.

Still, as the first ever Colosseum-style Pokémon brawler, Stadium 1 made a considerable splash in Japan. It’s hard to imagine now, but to a generation of Pokéfans, watching their favourite creatures animate attacks in three dimensions was an “overwhelming”, even formative moment.³See also this retrospective on Famitsu: https://web.archive.org/web/20250123013618/https://www.famitsu.com/article/202408/12478 Quite understandably, Stadium 1’s groundbreaking novelty made the game an attractive target for publishing house Shogakukan to latch onto and anchor yet another of its beloved Pokéstamp campaigns. So naturally, they did.

PokéStamps Go CG

Like in prior stamp drives, Shogakukan’s Grade-Specific Learning Magazines (GSLM) would host this fourth iteration. And when the campaign kicked off in GSLM November 1998, it predictably fell to the goofy persona of the Fan Club Chairman, or Kaichou, to announce the Pokéstamp Stadium series and act as its figurehead.⁴For the first time since the launch of the Original Campaign way back in April 1997, GSLM readers had been given a one month stamp-breather: Complete wrapped up in September 1998, and October 1998 only carried a non-campaign FlySurf Pika sheet. The result was a verdant two-page spread in, among others, GSLM November 1998, Year 3 that, supervised by an endearingly polygonal rendition of the Kaichou, touted a genuine innovation. This newest campaign wasn’t to repeat the done-to-death, slightly dull Pokédex-like portrait stamps that had characterised the Original, Blue and – to a degree – Complete campaigns. No sir. Stadium was to revolve around novel videogamey “CG Type” Pokéstamps.

Specifically, this go-around bumped up the stampage to a whopping four uniques per Pokémon: Three high-octane snaps to showcase any particular Pokémon’s three (of its four) standard Stadium moves in the game’s battle mode, plus one trusty full-body shot thematically capped in Stadium during a lull in the action. Take Charizard, who was depicted using Fire Spin, Swords Dance, and Flamethrower. Or Snorlax, portrayed using Amnesia (flat on its back with question marks overhead) Rest (snoozing), and Headbutt (in-your-face close, Prime-style). In this manner, Stadium expanded on Complete’s Story Series groundwork to deliver an array of even more dynamic, character-rich Pokéstamps that were exciting not merely to ogle, but also for what they implied (play N64’s Pokemon Stadium, it’s fantastic!). Nintendo must’ve been pleased.

Stadium’s stamp sheets looked a little different too, their format returning to a compact 6×6 grid from Complete’s 10×6. As divulged per the “5 big secrets” in the aforementioned GSLM November 1998 issue, there were to be 157 total Stadium stamps. A number which, you’ll gather, perfectly equals all of Stadium 1’s 40 Pokémon multiplied by four, minus three (for Ditto only received a portrait stamp). In turn, these 157 stamps (plus duplicates) were divided up between five main sheets, which we’ll christen the Pikachu, Scyther, Electrode, Pinsir and Cloyster sheets after the namesake stamp positioned in the top-left corner of each.

Together these sheets appeared as inserts in five consecutive GSLM issues between November 1998 and March 1999 in Years 1-6 as well as Learning Kindergarten. All were moreover outfitted with the familiar cutout “Club Marks” in varying colours that players could collect and submit to Shogakukan in exchange for (potential) prizes (see below). Finally, as was tradition, the campaign concluded with a “secret” Mew sheet in April 1999 that, besides a large portrait of Mew, also included an equally big Surfing Pikachu and a giddy, dashing Bulbasaur.⁵For whatever reason, Mew seemingly wasn’t included in issues of April 1999’s Learning Kindergarten. As one might expect, the Stadium stockbook had room to accommodate these “secret” stamps on “special” pages, bringing the campaign’s actual unique stamp total to 160.

Stadium’s Stockbook DX

Ah, the stockbook. Or rather, the ultra premium Stockbook DX. A visual and informational upgrade over Complete, this ring-bound collection log had a lovely encyclopedic character. Not merely because of its vertical orientation, but more so for how it presented Stadium’s action stamps as well as providing meta-campaign information.

Let’s first examine the stockbook’s Stadium sections. We’ve already covered how the stockbook grouped together a Pokémon’s four available stamps on a single page to make for what I can only describe as battle prowess microgalleries. Each of these 20-some pages also contained flavourtext that hyped up the Pokémon and stamp designs while overtly marketing the N64 Stadium game. Take Charizard, whose information read:

“Enjoy watching Charizard battle with unmatched grandeur in these four stunning, breathtaking stamps! When you have them all, it’s truly impressive! I hope you will experience it soon too!”⁶「リザードンがいさすがにさましく戦う姿が楽しめる、 美しく迫力満点のこの4枚!　それがすべてそろった時は感動もの! キミたちにも早く体験してほしいわい!」

Or Articuno, whose blurb stated:

“A storm of colorful bubbles engulfs the screen through Bubble Beam! This terrifying yet beautiful PokéStamp is pure artistry! Don’t miss out on this mesmerizing shot!”⁷「色のシャボンが嵐のごとく蔽におそいかかる「バブルこうせん」!! その恐ろしくも美しいポケスタは、まさに芸術的!! この魅惑の1枚、とり逃すなよ〜!!」

I have to admit, if there’s any single campaign’s stockbook I’d like to own, it’d be Stadium’s. There’s just something viscerally impressive about it. Even across space and time, one can sense that this Stadium compendium succeeded in replicating the wow-factor of trawling a 3D Pokédex without, of course, actually subjecting fans to the gruesome slog of completing a Pokédex. If I had to draw a comparison, I would imagine that the giant animatronic Pokédex at the erstwhile PC New York gave fans a similar sense of wonder. No mean feat for a stamp collection to even invite the comparison!

In any case, stockbook DX did much more than to tickle imaginations, for it also fuelled the collector brain by including a veritable treasure trove of Pokéstamp metadata. In what was labelled “PokeSta Perfect Data”, the Stadium stockbook’s supplementary pages chronicled – it would seem – every Pokémon stamp sheet released up to that point, providing sheet name, release date, and grayscale sample illustrations. Not since Pokémon Wonderland 1997 its “PokeSta Perfect History” and “All Sheets Collection” had any specific source attempted to exhaustively document the myriad primary and auxiliary PokéStamp sheets that came out willy-nilly throughout the late 1990s.⁸Pokémon Wonderland Vol 1, released August 1997, had provided historical stamp data through to October 1997. A collection checklist was included in the back. And lastly, the ring-bound Stadium album stated an intention to stay relevant and future-proof, noting how “future events” were to come with addable stock pages. Whether this promise of expandability was borne out in practice, however, I’m not sure – I’ve never seen any bundles of post-1999 pages for the stockbook DX appear on online marketplaces, and Y2K’s Gold & Silver Campaign moreover sported its very own flimsy, classic-style stockbook. Occam’s Razor says that Shogakukan did not support DX for very long, if at all.

How, then, were collectors to acquire this special Stadium album? In contrast to the original three Shogakukan stamp campaigns, Stadium’s exquisite stockbook was not tied in with any specific GSLM issue. Rather, it appears that GSLM December 1998 offered stamp collectors the option to purchase a copy as a “service” (サービス). This set it apart from previous stockbooks, which had come as free-of-charge “gifts” (プレセント) in any given campaign’s second GSLM issue. Incidentally, this makes the presumed sequential numbering of Stadium stockbooks an unreliable indicator of overall interest and participation in the Stadium campaign, but more on that later.

Interestingly, the most junior GSLM magazine to participate in the campaign – Learning Kindergarten – offered a lightweight alternative to the stockbook DX: a “Pokémon Encyclopedia of Eternal Stars”. Best identified, less gloriously, as two collection posters.⁹Learning Kindergarten December 1998 and January 1999 appear to have included these particular posters. See audiovisual section for images. Their primary purpose was much the same as the stockbook DX – to paste all of Stadium’s stamps and marvel at the complete collection – but came bereft of the complex additional information that, quite possibly, might be off-putting to the youngest of participants. This way, the Stadium Campaign was kept accessible to all levels despite a more mature bent. Or so was the idea, anyway.

Premium Prizes

The stream of goodies didn’t stop there, for further prizes came in two tiers. First, the everyman’s prize. By collecting each of Stadium’s unique sheets and affixing the campaign’s five brightly coloured Club Marks to a pre-prepared postcard to be mailed out by March 2, 1999, participants guaranteed themselves a Trainer Card (TC). But not just any. This was to be a custom TC. As the Fan Club Chairman explained in GSLM March 1999, the submission paperwork allowed applicants to pick any of Stadium’s 151 Pokémon, provide a nickname, determine its level, and communicate a unique Trainer name. All of these tidbits would then be printed on the TC below a stampified mugshot of the applicant’s Stadium favourite as communicated to Shogakukan. Wow.

Surviving examples of these cards aren’t many. In fact, I’ve seen only three: a Lv.100 Zapdos with all of its information blurred out, a nickname-less Lv.100 Articuno with its trainer name similarly censored, and a Lv.35 Pikachu. In what was perhaps a nod to the then-recent release of N64’s Hey You Pikachu and inevitable commemorative stamp sheets that could, by the way, also be added to the stockbook DX, the applicant chose to endearingly nickname the electric mouse “Pika-chan”. Cute. The back of all TCs, by the way, consisted solely of purple swirls (not even a Kaichou portrait!).

Second was the usual array of Poké-goodies – quite premium items this time, I might add. How exactly winners were picked (via raffle or otherwise) is presently unknown. It is clear, however, that the selection of prizes across all grade-years from Learning Kindergarten to Year 6 was as follows:

– Daisuki Club stickers (200 winners)
– Pokémon-themed instant camera (50 winners)
– Pokémon stamp badge series 1-3 full sets (10 winners)

Plus the grand prize: A singular Pokéstamp “Special Party Sheet” (パーティスペシャルシート) that was to feature either a still from Hey You Pikachu! or, perhaps more appealingly, a CG-style photo image of the prize winner’s Pokémon Stadium team.

Without a shadow of a doubt, this bespoke, never again available stamp sheet was the most remarkable campaign prize to date. Quite naturally, Shogakukan understood the uniqueness of the offer, and we’ll let GSLM March 1999, Year 3 pitch to you why this 1/1 sheet was (and still is, really) worth being excited about:

“Here’s what makes the Party Special Sheet so special!!
1. Create a party of six Pokémon from “Pokémon Stadium” and have it made into a stamp.
2. Compared to a regular stamp, it’s four times bigger—that’s huge!!
3. This sheet, created just for you, is the only one of its kind in the world!!”¹⁰パーティスペシャルシートはここがちがう!!
1「ポケモンスタジアム」のポケモン6体をパーティにしてスタンプ。
2 ふつうのスタンプとくらべると、 大きさ4倍/ ビッグじゃね!!
3 きみのリクエストで作られるこの シートは世界で1枚きりじゃ!!

A true one of one designed by, for, and of the winner… You’ve got to wonder if it’s still out there, somewhere. We may assume that Shogakukan contacted the lucky guy or gal personally to enquire what six ‘Mons would feature on the stamp. It’s an open question whether an image of the final product and / or the winner’s name was published in GSLM at all – perhaps in the magazine’s May 1999 issues. If not, then both the winner’s identity and the composition of the special sheet may forever be a mystery.

Overshooting the Mark

How well, then, did the Stadium Campaign do? Unfortunately, it’s hard to say. For all five campaigns that bookended Stadium – from Original through Ruby & Sapphire – we can measure popularity by Trainer Card proxy. That is to say, because each end-of-campaign applicant’s TC bears a unique, sequential six-digit number, we can make campaign-to-campaign comparisons of maximum ID# to get a sense of both the absolute and relative popularity of any given stamp drive. For example, Original’s highest known TID is 608018, which implies that at least six-hundred thousand GSLM readers successfully collected all of that campaign’s Club Marks. But since Stadium offered ultra-cool, TID-less custom Trainer Cards, this avenue of comparison doesn’t fly.

For Stadium, our sole popularity proxy is the unique ID number printed on the inside cover of each Stockbook DX. But you’ll sense the apples-to-oranges problem: Not only was Stadium’s stockbook a paid-for mail order item, it was also available to anyone who filled out the relevant forms and forked over cash. In other words, one could purchase DX and do precisely nothing with it, thus telling us more about the quality of Shogakukan’s advertising than persistent campaign participation rates. For the record, the highest known stockbook ID is #54833. Which, the attentive reader will note, is a more than tenfold decrease from the 600.000+ TIDs on record during the Complete Campaign (highest known: 603749). Did one in three participants purchase a mail order stockbook? One in five? One in 10? Or even one in 20? It’s anyone’s guess.

Taking a broader view, I do consider it probable that some degree of Pokéstamp fatigue set in after two years of practically continuous campaigns. Not only that – my sense is that Stadium was a touch too arcane and inaccessible to the average young GSLM reader. Take the stockbook, which required an additional purchase and waiting time to acquire – insurmountable obstacles, quite possibly, for the average gradeschooler and their understandably limited attention span.¹¹It should be noted that the stockbook DX was the gateway to even more, albeit minor, prizes. Successful applicants were automatically entered into a lottery to win a boxset containing a magnifying glass, flathead tweezers, and a PokeStamp-branded stick of glue. Geeky. While perfect for adult philatelists, the stockbook DX was arguably too intricate for young Pokéfans who simply wanted to haphazardly stick cool illustrations into booklets, not caring about meta-stamp information or even condition. (There’s a reason why so many Original, Blue and Complete stockbooks listed on digital marketplaces are unfinished yet rich in hastily applied sellotape.) Zeitgeist aside, early stamp campaigns found success thanks to a low barrier to entry that cast the widest possible net. Driven by a desire to innovate, Stadium somewhat overshot this mark: It delivered a cool-as-beans campaign, but in doing so lost sight of the need for simplicity to engage and captivate its core audience – schoolkids.

As such, it’s tempting to conclude that Stadium’s performance shook Shogakukan, for the campaign’s innovations notwithstanding, the publisher returned to a perhaps more tried and tested stamp format for the fifth campaign in the series: Gold & Silver. But first, let’s take a quick look at the mini-campaign that preceded it, ie. the mid-1999 Gold & Silver “Pre-Sheet” intermezzo.

NAVIGATION:
Complete Campaign < > GS”Pre-Sheet” Intermezzo

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Audiovisual

• 1
  A feat famously made possible by future Nintendo president Satoru Iwata reverse-engineering, then porting the Red & Green battle system in the record space of just one week. ↩︎
• 2
  Simply known as “Pokémon Stadium” in the West. ↩︎
• 3
  See also this retrospective on Famitsu: https://web.archive.org/web/20250123013618/https://www.famitsu.com/article/202408/12478 ↩︎
• 4
  For the first time since the launch of the Original Campaign way back in April 1997, GSLM readers had been given a one month stamp-breather: Complete wrapped up in September 1998, and October 1998 only carried a non-campaign FlySurf Pika sheet. ↩︎
• 5
  For whatever reason, Mew seemingly wasn’t included in issues of April 1999’s Learning Kindergarten. ↩︎
• 6
  「リザードンがいさすがにさましく戦う姿が楽しめる、 美しく迫力満点のこの4枚!　それがすべてそろった時は感動もの! キミたちにも早く体験してほしいわい!」 ↩︎
• 7
  「色のシャボンが嵐のごとく蔽におそいかかる「バブルこうせん」!! その恐ろしくも美しいポケスタは、まさに芸術的!! この魅惑の1枚、とり逃すなよ〜!!」 ↩︎
• 8
  Pokémon Wonderland Vol 1, released August 1997, had provided historical stamp data through to October 1997. ↩︎
• 9
  Learning Kindergarten December 1998 and January 1999 appear to have included these particular posters. See audiovisual section for images. ↩︎
• 10
  パーティスペシャルシートはここがちがう!!
  1「ポケモンスタジアム」のポケモン6体をパーティにしてスタンプ。
  2 ふつうのスタンプとくらべると、 大きさ4倍/ ビッグじゃね!!
  3 きみのリクエストで作られるこの シートは世界で1枚きりじゃ!! ↩︎
• 11
  It should be noted that the stockbook DX was the gateway to even more, albeit minor, prizes. Successful applicants were automatically entered into a lottery to win a boxset containing a magnifying glass, flathead tweezers, and a PokeStamp-branded stick of glue. Geeky. ↩︎