Pokémons 30th anniversary card drop is absolute chaos: Watch the video

Thirty years ago, catching Pokémon meant booting up a Game Boy.

In 2026, apparently, it means getting to Target before sunrise and hoping the person in front of you doesn't clean out the shelves.

The Pokémon Trading Card Game's highly anticipated 30th Celebration expansion arrived worldwide on Sept.

16, and fans have been extremely normal about it.

By which we mean: not normal at all.

SEE ALSO: 30 years of Pokémon: The memes that made it immortal Videos of the launch have flooded social media, showing enormous lines of would-be buyers waiting outside retailers and, in some cases, rushing for the cards once doors opened.

One video, posted by a Pokémon card collector on X , captured adult shoppers sprinting toward a display and frantically shoving merchandise into their baskets.

"It's like wild chickens during feeding times 😭😭," the poster wrote.

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It's the kind of scene that feels ripped from a Black Friday sale in the early 2000s , except everyone is here for Pikachu ( and not Elmo ).

The viral video is hardly an isolated incident.

According to local news reports, fans and resellers lined up for hours outside Targets across the U.S. , with some stores selling out shortly after opening.

In San Antonio, customers camped outside Best Buy ahead of the launch , while retailers introduced increasingly elaborate rules to keep the drop under control, including purchase limits, staggered entry, and restrictions on when customers could begin lining up.