London’s Natural History Museum website crashes over Pokémon sales
Such collaborations are increasingly being sought after by museums as gift shops become a growing source of earned income.
Market and Money
Pokémon enthusiasts trying to cop tickets for the Natural History Museum’s highly anticipated pop-up shop collaboration caused the London institution’s website to crash earlier this week. Tickets have since sold out.
The Pokémon x Natural History Museum collaboration, first announced in September, opened its doors to visitors Monday. The collaboration, initially set to run to March 22 but now extended to mid-April, includes new Pokémon-themed products designed specifically for the museum.
But the museum’s website quickly faced problems when it launched Monday, Maxwell Museums first reported. The sale was first delayed by 30 minutes. When it launched, the online purchasing queue was repeatedly paused as demand surged to about 90,000 people. About six hours after opening, the sale was shut down for the rest of the day.
"Unfortunately, we are experiencing technical issues, and we need to pause the queue until tomorrow. You won’t lose your queue place overnight. We'll restart the queue in the morning GMT time,” customers were told.
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The technical issues were fixed by the next day, but in-person tickets for the pop-up shop have already sold out, according to the museum’s website.
“Tickets for the Pokémon x Natural History Museum pop-up shop experience are now sold out,” the museum’s website read when accessed by Urgent Matter on Thursday. “There won’t be any more ticket releases, but you can check back for any relisted tickets.”
As for the online shop, it has also sold out of the Pokémon and Natural History Museum Pikachu Plush, stating that “no more stock is coming.”
Customers are limited to buying just one of any item, with a maximum number of five products allowed to be purchased.
The Natural History Museum collaboration follows Pokémon's 2023 partnership with the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.
When that collaboration went live, videos of rowdy crowds inside the museum’s shop went viral and its online stock sold out in less than 24 hours. The Pokémon Company later issued an apology and four museum workers were fired amid ongoing fall-out the following year.
Such collaborations are increasingly being sought after by museums as gift shops become a growing source of earned income for institutions.
MoMA recently announced a multi-year global licensing partnership with Barbie-maker Mattel, expanding its retail reach through co-branded products rolling out this year.
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