Pokemon's In-Store Universe

Pokemon USA (New York) has opened Pokemon Center, an interactive retail destination in Manhattan's Rockefeller Center.

The entertainment and merchandise center features interactive gaming environments and collectible Pokemon merchandise. Designed by The Phillips Group's new retail studio in collaboration with Pokemon, it combines a high-tech, interactive kid-oriented store in the context of a landmarked Art Deco building. A new lighting technology from Color Kinetics (Boston) pairs LED with gels to produce highly saturated computer-controlled moving color in the ceiling recesses.

Among the store's features are: an hourly Pokemon Sound and Light show depicting the Pokemon Universe; life-size animatronic characters guided by computer-controlled motion systems; a Pokemon Trainer Gym that lets visitors try out the latest Pokemon games, free of charge, on a 42-in. plasma TV screen using Game Cube and N64 platforms; four Pokemon distributing machines with large screen displays and docking ports for Game Boy cartridges to swap and receive Pokemon characters; Ultra Pokedex, a giant interactive database featuring extensive statistics, models and video images of all 251 Pokemon Universe characters, and information on store merchandise; and Animatronic Pokeball, a three-foot-diameter ball, suspended above the store entrance. At showtime, the lights dim, the sound builds, the Pokeball starts to spin, splits open and gushes fog.

“The 13,000 square-foot destination encompasses two levels on the corner of Rockefeller Center and 48th Street and incorporates art deco design elements that reflect the landmark architecture of the site,” explains David Hillenbrand, general manager for Pokemon USA Inc. “It is the only physical space in the U.S. exclusively dedicated to the world of Pokemon.”

Alec Zaballero, design director at The Phillips Group (New York), calls the new store “the concrete realization of the Pokemon brand.”

Pokemon USA is a subsidiary of The Pokemon Co. in Japan, established to manage and oversee the Pokemon franchise. Pokemon is a fantasy universe of characters first established as a video game in cooperation with Nintendo in Japan in 1996. The franchise arrived in North America in September 1998 and has grown into a multi-billion dollar, multi-media industry worldwide featuring computer and video games, TV shows, movies, an interactive web site, licensed products and now its own retail.