Pokémon Promotion Erupts Into Chaos At Van Gogh Museum
Pokemon Van Gogh promo Pikachu and Eevee
Earlier this month, it was announced that Pokémon is coming to the Van Gogh Museum, for some reason. It was a bit of an odd promotion, with very little context at the time, but now that we have all the information it does seem pretty cool. Unfortunately, the promotion is seemingly causing trouble at the Van Gogh Museum, and scalpers are making a neat idea terrible.
On its face, the Van Gogh Pokémon crossover is kinda cool. A series of paintings emulating Van Gogh’s signature style but featuring Pokémon are designed to bring visitors into the museum in Amsterdam to celebrate its 50th anniversary. It’s, understandably, aimed at kids, with some cute activities available in the museum with a lovely reward promo card — we’ll come back to that.
There are six paintings in total, including a Pikachu inspired by Self-Portrait with Grey Felt Hat, a Munchlax and Snorlax painting inspired by The Bedroom, and of course, a Sunflora painting inspired by Sunflowers. All of them are utterly adorable, and it’s actually a pretty cute tribute underneath it all — Van Gogh was reportedly inspired by Japanese artists, and these new paintings are from Japanese artists inspired by Van Gogh.
The Van Gogh Museum has even made available online a few interactive lessons for both primary and secondary schooling levels, and has activities on the floor of the museum for younger children. And there’s merch, letting kids go home with a reminder of their trip to the Van Gogh Museum.
Unfortunately, a small group of people seem to be ruining the experience for everyone else. Videos have emerged on social media and forum sites showing a chaotic rush of people trying to buy Pokémon merchandise at the Van Gogh Museum, and trying to score those elusive – but not really because anyone can get it for free just by ordering merch online – Pikachu Van Gogh cards.
A quick look on eBay shows that the promotional Pikachu trading card is currently going for hundreds of dollars, and the sad part is that most of those aren’t “buy it now” prices — people are actually bidding that much in auctions. It’s all just ridiculous, and is illustrative of a huge problem the Pokémon TCG and Pokémon merch in general has had lately.
The Van Gogh promotion is, overall, a good thing. It’s attracting people to the museum, and that’s helping keep art history thriving for a while longer. But I don’t blame any future promotional partners for being worried about this kind of thing, either. If I were managing a building filled with priceless artifacts, I certainly wouldn’t want a chaotic mob rampaging through my museum.
