Our tenth international specimen is a unique card from the 2022 special set Pokémon GO. This set is a collaboration between the TCG and the massively popular mobile game, and cards from this set are instantly recognizable by the Pokémon GO logo in the artwork.
Card Details
- Pokémon Name: Onix
- Set: Pokémon GO
- Year: 2022
- Card Number: 036/078
- Rarity/Edition: Common
- Artist: Mitsuhiro Arita
- National Pokédex No.: 095
Card Text & Attacks
- Type: Fighting
- HP: 120
- Attack 1: Rock Tomb
- Cost: [Colourless][Colourless][Colourless]
- Damage: 50
- Effect: During your opponent’s next turn, the Defending Pokémon can’t retreat.
- Attack 2: Raging Swing
- Cost: [Fighting][Fighting][Colourless][Colourless]
- Damage: 50x
- Effect: This attack does 50 damage for each damage counter on this Pokémon.
- Weakness: Grass x2
- Resistance: None
- Retreat Cost: [Colourless][Colourless][Colourless]
- Flavour Text: As it digs through the ground, it absorbs many hard objects. This is what makes its body so solid.
Collector’s Notes
This card is a fantastic piece of modern Pokémon history, representing the powerful synergy between the franchise’s different platforms. The artwork, by the legendary Mitsuhiro Arita, is clean and classic, depicting Onix soaring over a grassy field under a bright blue sky. The art style has a simple, almost cell-shaded feel that evokes the clean visuals of the mobile game it’s based on.
For our Geological Pokémon exhibit, this card’s flavour text provides a brilliant insight into Onix’s biology. It states that Onix “absorbs many hard objects” as it digs, which is what makes its body so solid. This is a perfect fictional representation of the geological process of conglomeration or agglomeration, where loose rocks, pebbles, and minerals are cemented together over time to form a solid, composite rock, like a conglomerate or breccia. This Onix is a living, breathing example of that process.
