[steven]

I'm not too old, but I remember when it came out in America. I had Nintendo Power back then and there was an article about how big it was in Japan. It talked about "Pocket Monster", which was known as "pokemon". My friend who lived down the street had some kind of promotinoal VHS tape from Nintendo before it came to America and was all excited about it. He called me over to check it out... I don't think I really remembered the article I had read before by then though. It talked about "Pokemon" and how it was going to be huge. I remember thinking that it wasn't going to be very big, but I'd get it so I could play it with my friend. (it's funny to think of how wrong I was!) I think that was the summer... I don't quite remember.

I remember going back to school and after a while EVERYBODY had the game. It was so huge it was crazy. I had it too, of course. We were all young, so of course we thought of THAT when we heard the game's title meant "poket monster" in Japanese. Only the dorky kids knew that much about it anyways, so everyone else would laugh when they heard people saying "poket monster" or pronouncing pokemon the Japanese way instead of (pokey-man).

So to answer your question, I don't recall ever hearing the phrase "pocket monster" before then though. I do recall thinking exactly what we're talking about when I first heard the phrase though.