The Pokémon Company has announced that art on a card in Pokémon TCG Pocket featuring Ho-Oh has been replaced due to “incorrect reference materials.” With the release of Pokémon TCG Pocket Wisdom of Sea Sky, the original Ho-Oh card featured artwork that had been allegedly traced from fan art. Going forward, the card will have a placeholder while new artwork is being prepared.
In a post from the Pokémon TCG Pocket X (formerly Twitter) account, The Pokémon Company states the following:
“Notice Regarding New Illustrations
Thank you for your continued support and passion for Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket.
We want to share an important update regarding the upcoming expansion, Wisdom of Sea and Sky. It has come to our attention that there was a production issue regarding the illustration of Ho-Oh featured in the immersive card artwork for Ho-Oh EX (3-Star) and Lugia EX (3-Star).
After internal review, we discovered that the card production team provided incorrect reference materials as official documents to the illustrator commissioned to create these cards. As a result, both cards have been replaced with a temporary placeholder that the team is actively working to replace with new artwork as soon as it’s ready. We are also conducting a broader investigation to ensure no similar issues exist elsewhere in the game.
To all our players who have been looking forward to this expansion, and to the talented illustrators who bring the Pokémon world to life, we deeply apologize for any inconvenience this has caused. We take this matter very seriously and are committed to strengthening our quality control processes to prevent this from happening again.
Thank you for your understanding, patience, and continued support of Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket. We remain dedicated to delivering an experience that you can enjoy.”
