The Yu-Gi-Oh! Collectible Card Game made the 'Trend Alert' page of this week's Time Magazine (more than a year after ICv2 brought this property to your attention, see '4Kids Nabs Yu-Gi-Oh').  The article, which included a color photo of the CCG cards, noted that the phenomenon began as a Japanese comic book and quickly blossomed into a formidable marketing alliance of videogames, cartoons, and a card game, which together managed to rack up over $2 billion in sales in Japan alone.  Noting that the same 'marketing masterminds who catapulted Pokemon into every U.S. schoolyard,' were behind Yu-Gi-Oh!'s invasion of the America, Time fearlessly predicted that since the game created a 'secret world beyond parents; it's bound to succeed.'

 

Time also correctly assessed the slow release strategy that Upper Deck has used to create demand and scarcity, while noting that 'Interest, however, is anything but scarce: the Yu-Gi-Oh! Website logs 1.2 million hits per day.' Yu-Gi-Oh! is hot and you don't have to take our word for it anymore, it's made Time Magazine.