There’s a part of me that wants to say the inside of Creatures Inc., the Tokyo company where Pokémon cards are made, is exactly what you’d expect. That it is everything you’ve imagined. A Wonkalike dream factory of wonder and weirdness, hidden in plain sight.
And in a way it sort of is. There’s no grand entrance or giant, Pokémon branding; it’s mostly one large, square room in a corporate, multi-use tower block, with a completely missable office door that when closed blends, quite impressively, into the charcoal walls of a corridor. It swings open to a sparkling white, hi-gloss lobby that sits in perfect contrast the exterior, the Creatures logo, magnetic, on the wall in front. It’s probably not even intentional, but still. You get the effect.
The reality, obviously, is that Creatures inc. is just an office. There are a few tells – in the lobby a lanky, long-necked Alolan Exeggutor blends in with some houseplants; at one end of the main room is a wall of bland, office-grey filing cabinets, but instead of stationary inside it’s what must be tens of thousands of Pokémon cards – every one ever, at least since Creatures began, after the old Wizards of the Coast license was taken over in 2003 – organised immaculately, row by row.
Source: Eurogamer Inside Pokémon's house of cards