The Story Behind Roy and Fuecoco’s Pokemon Wafer Card

Fuecoco & Roy Pokemon Wafer Card No.02 (2023, Holo)

Japan’s Shokugan Tradition and the Pokemon Wafer Series

Japan has a long-standing category of packaged goods called shokugan — food toys — where a snack comes bundled with a collectible. Bandai’s Pokemon Wafer series works on exactly this premise: each individually sold pack contains a thin wafer biscuit and one randomly inserted card. The format is carried by convenience stores, drugstores, and general retailers across Japan, and the lineup is refreshed season by season to reflect the anime’s current chapter and coincide with game releases.

Card No.02 in this 2023 series carries a full-surface holographic finish — prismatic foil across the entire card face, rather than a single accent panel. Within the shokugan format, that treatment sets certain cards apart from the standard-print inserts in the same set, and holo inserts tend to appear at a lower ratio within the overall print run, though exact figures vary by series.

Roy, Fuecoco, and Pokemon’s New Anime Chapter

April 2023 marked a deliberate turning point for the Pokemon anime. After more than 25 years, the story arc following Ash — known as Satoshi in Japan — concluded in January of that year, and a new series launched in April under the international title Pokemon Horizons: The Series. Two protagonists replaced him: Liko (Lico) and Roy.

Roy is portrayed as energetic and emotionally driven, with roots in the Galar region. His partner is Fuecoco, the Fire-type starter from the ninth-generation games Pokemon Scarlet and Violet, released in November 2022. Fuecoco is built around a crocodilian design and evolves into Crocalor and then Skeledirge. In the new anime, Roy and Fuecoco’s journey is partly anchored by a connection to a specific ancient Pokemon — a narrative thread that runs through the series. This card, numbered No.02, pairs the series’ male lead with his partner Pokemon near the front of a set built around the incoming cast.

What Draws Collectors to This Kind of Item

The handoff from Ash to new protagonists was a significant moment for the global Pokemon fanbase, and Pokemon Horizons reached international streaming audiences who had followed the franchise for years. Fuecoco was already a popular starter choice among Scarlet and Violet players before the anime launched, and its central role alongside Roy added another layer of recognition.

Wafer cards occupy a distinct corner of Pokemon collecting, separate from the Trading Card Game. These are officially licensed shokugan products — copyright notices on this card list Nintendo, Creatures Inc., Game Freak, TV Tokyo, ShoPro, and JR Kikaku — manufactured for Japan’s domestic retail market with no standard international distribution. The Japanese text and presentation are original to that context: this card is a record of how the franchise introduced its new era to its home audience in 2023.