Today on March 24th 2025, The Pokemon Center silently started dropping Destined Rivals on the official website. Discord servers were going haywire with people trying to get links to products and try to secure their own boxes of Destined Rivals.
Here’s what happened…
The Pokemon Center website instituted a queue system to keep their own servers from overloading, from what we can tell there was upwards of over 100,000 people in queue before the products even went live.
These are the products that dropped:
Booster Box: SKU #: 10-10157-101
Booster Bundle: SKU #: 100-10638
3PK Blister: SKU #: 100-10633
Exclusive Elite Trainer Box: SKU #: 100-10653
Briefly I did get through the queue, and was able to see products… but there’s a massive problem. The products were not listed publicly. They were not in the navigation. they were omitted from search functionality, no hero banners, and no email alerts that they promised us we would receive by signing up for their mailing list.
Eventually, once I was added back onto the queue for another 30 minutes or so, the site refreshed and I was able to see the hero banner finally added. Below it was a Team Rocket apparel drop banner as well. However upon clicking the banner I was once again thrust into the queue.
The end result has been another disastrous launch for true fans and likey to be another epic win for the bots. As many users in discord feverishly posted images of their failed order attempts due to being detected as a bot, while actual bots got through successfully.
The limit per customer was 1 item per product. The lowest limit we’ve seen so far and the lowest we will ever see.
Here are some images of the Pokemon Center Exclusive and Regular ETBS.
We did get a brief look at the contents of the ETB which feature some Sleeves that feature Giovanni and Mewtwo. However we couldn’t find a photo of the ETB promo.
Additionally, we noticed the Booster Box for Destined Rivals is not visibly ‘Enhanced’ which means we will most likely not be getting a box topper situation like with Journey Together.
Pokemon is at peak hype right now and it’s likely not going to slow down with the upcoming 30th anniversary of Pokemon in 2026.
AFTER the drop, the email went out…
