They have long been popular, but the popularity has increased more than 5x since the pandemic. They were printing less than 2 billion a year before then [1], and are now selling more than 10 billion a year despite shortages, scalping, etc [2].

Perhaps "boom" is a better word for it than "fad". But my point is just that this demand seems to be largely driven by artifical scarcity, speculation, influencers - similar to Labubu.

And eventually prices will hit a peak and I expect we will see demand fall off rapidly.

[1] https://www.pokebeach.com/2021/06/pokemon-tcg-sold-3-7-billi...

[2] https://www.ign.com/articles/10-billion-pokemon-cards-were-p...

Their popularity is a fad. You are talking about their popularity when they first released in the US. They faded significantly for at least a decade if not two until seeing a recent resurgence so massive even random corner stores carry pokemon card packs these days.