The recent opening of the Pokémon Center London was something of a mixed bag; while it was great to have a dedicated (if temporary) store in the UK for Pokémon goods, the queues, lack of stock and inevitable flood of scalpers meant that for some, the experience wasn't quite as positive as it possibly could have been.
Still, with 30,000 visitors during its four-week opening period, it clearly went well enough for The Pokémon Company to have a second stab at the concept, as it has just been announced that the pop-up shop will return to London during the 2020 Pokémon World Championships.
Taking place in London next summer at a venue which has not yet been announced, the Pokémon World Championships is the "premier tournament for Pokémon video games and the Pokémon Trading Card Game", and the pop-up store will be open for the duration of the event.
Will you be attending, and – more importantly – will you be taking plenty of cash with you?
Comments 13
I'm curious if they are gonna go for Shepherds Bush again or go for another location like Shoreditch for the hipster crowd or Convent Garden for the tourists.
Time to queue up again.
@jump It hasn't been confirmed yet
May be there is something I'm missing but why queue up for ages in a busy city centre when you could just order the stuff online?
Or if the stuff is only available in that shop why not just make bank and sell it online...
Nintendo love letting scalpers make a fortune.
@Andigaming You can't order stuff online, there is no Pokemon Centre in europe, online or offline so you'd have to pay a lot more to import the things they are selling
Yeah I felt sorry for all the poor children who queued up last time....
...oh wait a sec.
This will be pointless once again for so many reasons. Surely the amount of demand this year shows how popular the store was, open it up for several months, not just a few weeks. Or alternatively open multiple stores for a period of time, spread over the UK, give everyone a chance. Traveling to London is bloody expsensive. I love Pokemon but no way am i going to get stand in a queue from 5/6/7am in the morning and waiting many, many hours, that is just ridiculous with small children. Great for ebay scalpers.
If there's so much demand why not open a permanent store? it makes sense no?
I went on the final weekend and after driving for three hours found the queue had closed seven minutes before I got there. This was about 45mins before it even opened. If this is a bigger store or is managed better, I'll be looking to go to this, especially if Bowler Hat Pikachu makes a return!
@Matthew010 Plus if you got there 8 mins earlier and queued, by the time you would have got in, everything exclusive would have sold out hours before and you've queued up for stuff you can easily get online!
@Gumbo1995 Sure it's easy to get the stuff online, but it's expensive. The Pikachu is selling for easily £50+ every time whereas in store it was only £20. And for me at least, it wasn't entirely about the exclusive stuff - it was about the experience of visiting a shop dedicated to one of your favourite franchises.
@Matthew010 I meant the non-exclusive stuff would have been the only things available in the pop up store because all the exclusives would have been gone by the time you would have got in. Bowler Hat Pika was selling out around 1pm every day and you had to be in the queue by 6am to get in just before 1
We'll see, depends on the month and whatnot. I skipped it the first time, so we'll see....
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