Pokémon has had a very important cultural impact in many countries where it has been imported. In Japan, Pokémon became popular, selling over a million copies of Pocket Monsters in 1996. At the 1997 Tokyo Game Show, players could obtain Mew Pokémon by downloading their games. The result was a 4km queue, with some people camping overnight before the show. Upon arriving in the United States, the Red and Blue versions sold over 200,000 units in two weeks, then continued to sell at an average of 800,000 units per month. Both versions were the best games sold by Nintendo. At the time they were the best-selling games in video game history. Pokemon Pinball was the game released on the Game Boy and it sold even faster, with more than 262,000 units sold in 20 days. The toy series that Hasbro distributed was also a commercial success. As the television series grew in popularity, so did Hasbro, overtaking its main competitor, Mattel, in 2000. The games were so popular that Hasbro was unable to gather enough toys to meet demand. Wizards of the Coast had the same problem with card game collectibles and sold more than 50 million cards between January and March 1999. By July 1999, Pokémon had generated more than $ 5 billion.
The phenomenon also affected European countries, such as France, where the Red and Blue versions were the best-selling games of 1999 and one million copies of each were sold in June 2000, less than a year after their release in France. The animated series aired in several countries, including the United States, Australia, Japan, and Canada.
