Last year it was Minecraft. My then 6-year-old spoke only in Blocks and Villagers, Obsidian and EnderDragons. By the time I got around to Googling ‘WTF Is The Actual Point of Minecraft?!’ he had developed a whole new language altogether.
This one consisted of Energies and EX’s, Evolutions and Legendaries. Prone as I am to the dramatics, I was just about to lift the phone to enquire as to whether my now 7-year-old might be a candidate for Mensa with all this new extraordinary vocabulary.. I realised he’d gotten into Pokemon.
I am 42 years old. When Pokemon was created in 1996 I was a singing waitress at Ellen’s Stardust Diner in NYC and thought I was Madonna. Makey-uppy characters with awesome names and even more awesome powers really wasn’t on my radar.
I worked at HerFamily three years ago when the Pokemon App came out. The ‘young people of the office’ were going crazy for it as I nodded and smiled in that way you do when you haven’t a fucking clue what’s going on. And to be fair, I was busy anyway writing about Top Tips for Parenting, an’ all.
Well, here’s a top tip: the crazy shit that your kids get into can actually be pretty cool if you get involved yourself. I LOVE Pokemon now, thanks to Jacob and his wiley gang of hardcore Pokemon card-trading mates. There have been playdates where my kid will come home, exhausted, sighing; “Finn/Sean/Cillian/Ethan/Jack made some seriously harsh trades today’ as if coming from a hard day at the office. They would seriously give Wall Street a run for their money.
The general release of the highly anticipated Detective Pikachu movie was coinciding with our holiday abroad and I was gutted for Jacob, thinking we’d get home and all his pals would have seen the movie without him.
But then, Picka-CHU! we had a miracle – our pals at Warner Bros invited us to the Irish Premier! And not only that, they let us take along all of the Wall Street Traders with us. This Mammy is on brownie points FOREVER.
Held at the Odeon Cinema, the morning was super cool with face painting, games and even a full-size Pickachu for photo ops and cuddles.
The movie itself is really good fun – witty, clever and top notch CGI which all flows seamlessly with the action.
And Ryan Reynolds is in it. Need I say any more?
Detective Pokemon is on general release on May 10th – you really want to take the kids to see it, it’s brill.
Huge thanks to Nick and all at Warner for a great experience. From the mouths of Traders, ‘It was the best day ever’ xxx