The latest teaser for the Pokémon GO Road Trip was released recently in the form short social media video. You can find it on the official Pokémon GO YouTube channel here.
In it, a bearded man approaches a table in a dark room, on which is a Capslab trucker hat with a Pikachu patch, what appears to be a Clip-N-Go style Pokeball toy (noted due to the hinge seen on the back of the ball) and a small box with a bamboo lid which is glowing with orange light.
Upon opening the box, being briefly bathed in that orange light, the man retrieves a car key-fob to then hear a truck horn nearby. He gears up with the items from the table, along with some sunglasses, and heads down to open the door. A short montage of locations hits the screen just as the door opens, only to return to the man standing outside looking for the truck. Looking down he sees a toy truck instead, with a voiceover stating “Well, that’s not what I imagined.”
Only then does the truck horn blare again, the man removes his sunglasses and gives a nod of approval. The video ends with the caption “Or… is it? Stay tuned” along with the social hashtags #PokemonGO and #PokemonGORoadTrip.
Pokémon GO: Road Trip locations
This is the latest in a line of teasers for the Pokémon GO: Road Trip that started towards the end of April with some locations being revealed through blurry images of European city landmarks. Handy Redditors on The Silph Road identified each of cities from these landmarks starting in the top left and following the dotted line:
- Manchester, UK
- London, UK
- Paris, France
- Valencia, Spain
- Berlin, Germany
- Scheveningen, Netherlands
- Cologne, Germany
Since then, country specific Pokémon GO social media accounts from the above regions have been posting variations of the same content. One series, showing the aforementioned city blurred in the background with a red traffic light and the caption “Red light. But not for long…” suggesting we may see a full reveal in the coming days.
And the most recent posts before the trailer again featured blurred backgrounds with those same landmarks, and a seemingly AI generated image of a stereotypical breakfast from these countries up front, like this Spanish example:
There are quite a bit more:
Speculations
First and foremost, it’s a fairly safe assumption that this will be a series of in-person events held in the list of cities above in a running order, as detailed on the map.
Each of the images with food have keys featured alongside breakfast items, I think the food is just to show the country again, but the keys seems to be a recurring item in all of the promotional material. Even though Klefki is being featured for this year’s Global GO Fest, could we see the release of its shiny? The region covered by the Road Tour map seems to have a lot of ground covered in the Klefki spawn area, as parts of the UK also see this regional Pokémon spawning. This would make its inclusion in GO Fest all the more exciting.
Something that comes up from the video first mentioned here is the use of toys, both the Pokéball and the toy truck. While there’s no Pokémon based specifically on toys in general, there are plenty of man made objects that either become Pokémon or become hosts for Pokémon to inhabit. The clear options here would be Rotom and its many forms, or even the mythical Pokémon Magearna, which has an alternate form with a Pokéball themed colour scheme. It certainly has been a while since we had a mythical released outside of GO Fest.
We’re also expecting being on the road to be a recurring theme at each stop of this event. And in Generation 9, we had a Pokémon perfect for this in the form of Cyclizar and it’s paradox forms, the legendary Pokémon, Koraidon and Miraidon. Could the Road Trip be used to release these powerful Pokémon in local raids around these cities, with a global release later on?
Or finally, we have to consider that there isn’t a big new release as part of the Road Trip, and instead each stop on the tour is a small event with very localised spawns, themed Pokéstops and bonuses. This would be similar to when Pokémon GO has small event in tandem with a major gaming or pop culture exhibition.
Have your say in the comments, what are you expecting from the Road Trip? With the ramping release of the social media teases, it looks like we won’t be waiting for long.
