When does a fad stop being a fad and start being a canon or an icon or whatever? Is Shakespeare a fad? As a 8 years old I knew all Pokémons by name their powers and I have spent literally all my pocket money on Pokémon, and now almost 30 years later people still seem to dig it. Also I don’t think it ever really went away in the meanwhile too. But yeah it could also just be millennial nostalgia and the cyclical nature of cultural products which over and over resurfaces and recycles and remixes the stuff from the past

It's a joke, people have been calling Pokemon a fad since 1998. Pokemania in the early 2000s was bigger than the Pokemon Go moment in 2016. But Pokemon endures.

I'm pretty sure that was sarcasm.