After leaving us in the dark release date wise for a few weeks, the ghost type bag collaboration between Pokemon and Village Vanguard finally started appearing in stores on Monday, April 27th.
Village Vanguard is a chain of stores located throughout Japan that specializes in strange things. Similar to the American store, Spencers, but with a wider range and variety of items. They have a section devoted to books and magazines, to kitchen items, to toys, and even a small section for imported goods such as American sized Pringles and soda. Their imported snacks sometimes rival actual import stores! Village Vanguard is the perfect place to shop for souvenirs if you want something a little weird, which is why I was surprised they were in cahoots with the Pokemon Company, and of all the designs to feature, ghost type Pokemon at the very beginning of summer.
I started seeing my friends sharing pictures of Village Vanguard bag displays around noonish or so on Monday, and by 2 pm, reports were circulating that bags had already sold out at the Nagoya location. As of now, bags still seem to be in stock in Tokyo, but ghosts, especially the Litwick line, are very popular and tend to sell out quickly. As we head into Golden Week, a week long period of time where almost everyone in Japan is on vacation, I’m not sure how long they will last. At one location we went to in the same building as the Mega-Tokyo Pokemon Center, they had limits on how many of each design you could buy at one time (2 of each), but the second location did not have any limits.
These cotton bags come in one of three designs. A (more photos in this post) features some of the more popular ghost type Pokemon and Pikachu. B features the Litwick line and Pikachu. C has silhouettes of all ghost type Pokemon, plus Chandelure in color, and no Pikachu. Design C, in my opinion, was the best design, and didn’t include Pikachu (who isn’t a ghost type Pokemon!) but I would have preferred if you could actually see the Pokemon and not just their shadows.
I ultimately decided to buy design A…(although if I end up going back and the bags are still in stock, I might cave and get C as well). Each bag comes packaged folded up like so.
Regardless of which design you buy, every bag has the same tag featuring Chandelure. I love Chandelure and wish he had more merch, so this is fine by me!
Once folded out, the bag turned out to be much bigger than I was expecting. Although the fabric itself is fairly thin, it could very easily hold general items you might take with you to go out for the day (wallet, headphones/music, phone, 3DS, etc.) The downside is there are no side or inside pockets, but again it is fairly spacious, and comfortably fits over your shoulder!
Ghostie bag – big enough to act as a summer blanket for a sleepy Psychic kitty!
