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From silly parody cards to offensive designs, there are some really wild reasons behind why certain Pokémon cards were banned from tournament play.
When a trading card game has been going on as long as the Pokémon Trading Card Game has, there’s bound to be a ton of outdated or banned cards. Even in other trading card games like Magic: The Gathering, legacy cards like the infamous Black Lotus have long since been banned in tournament play. Pokémon is no exception, with some really interesting and bizarre banned cards.
One such card, called Imakuni?’s Doduo, is possibly one of the strangest trading cards ever produced, let alone from the Pokémon Trading Card Game. It was actually produced alongside several other parody cards, all of which were part of the Imakuni set. These Imakuni cards all have some pretty wild effects that led to many of them having the message “This card cannot be used at official tournaments” printed directly on them.
Imakuni?’s Doduo is a special Doduo card that, when the card retreats, requires whoever played the card to throw as far as they possibly can. This is meant to mimic an actual retreating Pokémon in a comedic way, making it pretty fun for casual play. The card’s special ability doesn’t actually provide any strategic advantage and is strictly meant to be a joke, hence why the card is banned at tournaments.
Other silly cards like Happy Birthday Pikachu from the Ancient Mew set are also banned. The Birthday card has boosted the attack on the user’s birthday, though it was far too tempting for players to simply lie. The titular card from the “Ancient Mew” set is also banned since it’s written in ancient runes. Players could visit the Pokémon Trading Card Game‘s official website to find a translation of the card, but it was still banned for its general unreadability.
Pokémon isn’t the only card game to add joke cards. Magic: The Gathering has an entire line of parody cards that are meant to be in-jokes for the Magic community. One such card is Blacker Lotus, an even more powerful version of the already overpowered Black Lotus. There are also several special sets of parody cards known as Unglued and Unhinged that follow a similar design to cards like Blacker Lotus.
Pokémon has a few more cards that are banned from tournaments or are just generally not used in traditional play. Some cards are banned for just being incredibly overpowered, such as Neo Genesis Sneasel. Neo Genesis Sneasel’s Beat-Up ability could deal a massive amount of damage by the second round. Ironically, the Neo Genesis set of Pokémon cards was also designed by the people behind Magic, Wizards of the Coast.
Other Pokémon cards are banned for having offensive or crude imagery, such as Koga’s Ninja Trick featuring some problematic Nazi symbols. Plenty of early Pokémon cards are incredibly problematic based on their artwork and have either been redesigned or simply banned from play as a result. The art on Team Rocket’s Grimer was originally printed with what many saw as a Grimer peering up a girl’s skirt. The original printings of most Jyns cards were also redesigned after the Pokémon’s design was compared to blackface.
Since the earlier issues with those previous cards, it seems as though the Pokémon TCG hasn’t had any offensive or problematic designs. There’s still the occasional unbalanced card, though these are usually either reprinted or simply banned from fan tournaments. The most problematic part of the modern cards may actually be the wave of scalpers and collectors that hoarded card packs and endangered customers during the recent collection obsession.
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