>>11836616True.
Going to Rite-Aid and seeing new Pokemon card packs and begging your mom for a new pack. Watching the show on TV during the first season. Going to Burger King during the Pokemon 2000 movie era and getting the merchandise.
Playing the first gen Pokemon game on the playground and during school breaks with everyone having different gameboys, aka some had the green or yellow Gameboy Pocket while others had the teal or lime green Gameboy Color.
And oh man, the fights. Watching the fights break out (saw a kid get decked for trading a fake Pokemon card, and another pushed to the ground for cheating during a link cable battle).
A year after Gen 2 though, the fever died though imo. I remember being pumped to come back to school during the summer during 5th or 6th grade, and most people moved onto stuff like Yugioh or actual sports and stuff.
My younger brother got Ruby which I thought was interesting, but by then, I figured out how to play GBA games on emulators and was emulating other games instead with the shitty eMachine we had running Windows XP.
Good times.
Back to topic though, truly a flash in the pan imo. You just had to be there. I think watching some YouTube videos about the hype will get you close to the feeling but I can't think of anything that crazily involved other than maybe like Beanie Babies or some other kind of big toy phenomenon.