crypt0savage

Before America was pulling Charizard from booster packs, kids were taking him home from KFC. November 1998. “Finger Lickin’ Good” met “Gotta Catch ’Em All.” Hidden inside one of the biggest fast food promotions of the era were some of the earliest English Pokémon cards ever publicly released. Pokémon was already massive in Japan. America was just meeting Pikachu, Charizard and the original 151. Nintendo wanted Pokémon in front of American families. KFC put it on the dinner table. Nintendo described a $17 million partnership reaching as many as 5,000 restaurants, backed by TV advertising and Game Boy demo displays. From November 15, 1998 through January 3, 1999, KFC Kids’ Meals offered one of six Pokémon items: • Ivysaur Squirter • Pikachu Treasure Keeper • Pokémon Card Game • Pokémon Monster Matcher • Pokémon Puzzle Blocks • Pokémon Tattoos But collectors should know the Pokémon Card Game. Seven Pokémon. 28 cards. Four identical copies of each: #02 Ivysaur #06 Charizard #25 Pikachu #95 Onix #123 Scyther #143 Snorlax #149 Dragonite Those are Pokédex numbers, NOT card numbers. The four copies were intentional. The original instruction booklet explains this was a matching game for 2 to 4 players. Ask opponents for cards, complete groups of four identical Pokémon and finish with the most sets to win. Basically Pokémon Go Fish. These were not Wizards of the Coast TCG cards. And they were distributed before the English Base Set arrived in January 1999. That is why the 1998 KFC cards are widely cited among the first publicly available English Pokémon cards. “Publicly available” matters. Earlier English test material existed, including the famous Blastoise test prints. But those were never sitting inside Kids’ Meals at thousands of restaurants across America. These were. KFC also ran a separate plush promotion from November 9 through December 20, 1998. Vulpix, Dratini, Seel and Zubat were made by Applause and sold for $4.99 with any meal, each carrying a circular “Special Edition” tag. Nearly 28 years later, PSA populations supplied October 6, 2026 show: Ivysaur: 178 graded / 69 PSA 10 Charizard: 366 / 142 Pikachu: 270 / 127 Onix: 192 / 110 Scyther: 201 / 116 Snorlax: 249 / 129 Dragonite: 234 / 88 Total: 1,690 graded. 781 PSA 10s. 46.2% gem rate. Ivysaur has the lowest PSA 10 population at 69. Dragonite is next at 88. Charizard is the most graded at 366. PSA population does not equal original rarity. It tells us how many PSA has graded, not how many KFC distributed or how many survive. But look at the combination: Early English Pokémon cards. A documented national KFC promotion. Charizard and Pikachu before the English TCG exploded. Original booklets, toys and promotional plush. And fewer than 1,700 total PSA grading records across all seven designs nearly three decades later. Before Pokémon cards became a billion dollar hobby, seven of them were sitting next to fried chicken. A piece of Pokémon’s American beginning was hiding in a KFC Kids’ Meal.