2021 marks the 25th anniversary of the uber-popular Pokemon franchise, and The Pokemon Company is celebrating in a big way. It announced today that it will be collaborating with famous pop musician Katy Perry and other celebrities that have yet to be disclosed.

Along with the musical collaborations, The Pokemon Company will release tons of merchandise as the year goes on, including partnerships with McDonald's, Build-a-Bear, General Mills, and Mattel, just to name a few.

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And for the Pokemon Trading Card Game fans out there, there will be new TCG collection packs coming out every month from March to October. The packs will feature classic card designs from the original set of trading cards that were released about 20 years ago or so. The Kanto favorites such as Pikachu and Charmander will come back this year with a special Pokemon anniversary design on the front of the cards.

 

According to Serebii, the First Partner Pack will be released on March 5, 2021, and will have oversized cards that feature the starters from the pack's region. This first pick will focus on Pokemon from the Galar region, which is the latest region that was introduced in Pokemon Sword and Pokemon Shield. Here are the release dates for the rest of the packs and the region it focuses on:

  • Alola First Partner Pack - April 2
  • Kalos First Partner Pack - May 7
  • Unova First Partner Pack - June 4
  • Sinnoh First Partner Pack - July 9
  • Hoenn First Partner Pack - Aug 6
  • Johto First Partner Pack - Sep 3
  • Kanto First Partner Pack - Oct 8

As far as other Poke-related anniversary events go, The Pokemon Company has yet to reveal anything major just yet. There are some Pokemon projects currently in the works for the Nintendo Switch, such as a sequel to Detective Pikachu and a new Pokemon Snap game, but neither of those titles have concrete released dates, nor release windows for that matter.

There might be a chance that the highly-rumored remakes of Pokemon Diamond and Pokemon Pearl release this year, but fans will just have to wait for The Pokemon Company to finally confirm it. These remakes would most likely use the same engine that was used to develop Pokemon Sword and Shield, but some fans have a different idea of how the remakes could potentially look.

A fan used Unreal Engine to create mock-up images of the Sinnoh region's Twinleaf Town and Route 201, two locations from Pokemon Diamond and Pokemon Pearl. It was quite impressive and truly showed how realistic a Pokemon game could potentially be one day.

Pokemon TCG fans can look forward to the first anniversary pack when it releases on March 5.

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Source: Serebii