Pokémon TCG announces Trick or Trade BOOsters as part of new seasonal program

All the Garchomps and Gengars haunting the streets this year on Halloween night might find some ghost-themed Pokémon TCG cards mixed with their treats, as special Trick or Trade BOOster bundles hit stores beginning in September. The 2022 spooky season will start a new, reportedly more centralised holiday event schedule.

Trick or Trade BOOsters will be sold in a 40-count bundle and will apparently only be available at participating grocery stores and big retailers. They aren’t exactly the full-sized boosters players are used to cracking open from their local games stores, though. The cheekily named mini BOOsters contain three cards showcasing Pokémon one would expect to find during Halloween - ghosts such as Ghastly and Mimikyu, Zoobat, Pumkaboo, etc.

The boosters will be sold in a large-ish orange and purple plastic bag very much in line with the assorted candy and chocolates available everywhere in the US once the weather starts dipping towards Fall. Each of the packages inside are meant to be handed out to trick-or-treaters on Halloween night, or traded amongst friends during their festivities. The Halloween cards will be marked with a big pumpkin Pikachu sticker in the bottom-right corner of the artwork, and, while not confirmed, fan site Pokebeach has shown screenshots of Mewtwo among the possible pulls.

The Halloween event will be the first attempt at a new method for The Pokémon company to celebrate holidays and roll out seasonal merchandise such as plushes, clothing and TCG tie-ins. An interactive website is planned to launch alongside the spooky boosters that will have activities for younger fans and access to all the promotional gear for this and future holidays.

Halloween has always been a particularly big event for the Pokémon franchise, and it has been celebrated in past years with more elaborate and larger merchandise lines. One goal the company stated in the press release is creating ways to tie the established Pokémon audience, which has since grown to adulthood and started families of their own, to a newer generation of fans. Honestly, I would have been thrilled to get trading cards on Halloween, so this new booster, ahem… BOOster tradition sounds like it could be a winner.