As Clear and HershelLayton have pointed out, the question of whether these pull rates effected customers comes down to what happens if the if the tray is gone. Water Pokémon Master's theory was a perfectly valid one, and his suggestion that pull rates were not affected. Clear's note on the human element is important to take into account, however.
The lottery tickets analogy definitely swings on whether a random, deliberately mislabeled box of bulk was shoved into the machine, but the important difference to note is that the lottery ticket itself isn't generating the prize. The prize itself stands on its own, and will roll over to next month if no ticket is called. Unless I'm imagining the wrong kind of lottery. The effect, no doubt, is felt the most by people who opened packs with obviously incorrect card arrangements, but, as Water Pokémon Master pointed out, he's open to new evidence.
Pokémon already did one of the best things they could do to make amends for this that was both economically feasible and marketably sustainable... desaturate the pull rates of chase cards. Those Hyper Rares would only be in one out of three boxes, and the Alternate Arts (including the Ultra Rare V's, which, you may notice, were unaffected by this theft) were rarer still. Now, however, you have about as good a chance of pulling a Gardevoir ex Illustration Super Rare as you do of pulling an Ultra Rare Team Star Grunts. Two Ultra Rares and a Super Illustration Rare in each box rivals the Japanese booster boxes, and, while the Double Rares and Illustration Rares are still only equal to one Japanese box, you get all the Rares and half the Reverse Holos in the set in a single box. (Which means, with a couple of booster boxes, you should be able to trade around to get the whole set of Reverse Holos, something which I've heard surprisingly little about.) Nowadays, stealing a pallet from the factory would have far less of an impact on the pull rates. It only remains to be seen whether the Illustration Super Rares will fall any lower ($60 is still expensive for what is essentially a Character Secret Rare, but it could be worse if you compare Miraidon ex to many Alternate Art V's and VMAXs. It is strange, however, that the base level Illustration Rares are about twice as expensive as the ones from Crown Zenith, so perhaps the set will continue to decrease in price and Miraidon ex will settle into a $20-40 range, with the less expensive Illustration Secret Rares following suit.)
The boxes with multiple hyper rares are their own problem. Most likely the causes behind that pallet will never come to light.
Poke Jordan, you're a content developer, right? You once suggested that people should read your own content when 4 Regieleki VMAX were missing from a decklist in the Scarlet & Violet set review article. Here's a story about Water Pokémon Master. Years ago, an ad for Pokémon Black and White appeared in the Zoroark: Master of Illusions movie during its debut in Japan. Water Pokémon Master payed a visit to Japan at this time and met with a contact who had taken pictures of this ad, which he published on the blog. Well, several people from various forums, both in Japan and the United States, started clamoring that Water Pokémon Master should be arrested for publishing copyrighted video footage. They had the law on their side, but the strange thing was that there really wasn't that much new stuff in the video, and it had already been seen by thousands of fans in Japan. Yet Pokémon fans still chose an ad that was public knowledge overseas... over a human being. The ad was a marketing tool, not an entire episode of Pokémon the Series. It was intellectual property to
promote intellectual property, not something Pokémon hoped to market on live TV, then on DVD's, and finally on streaming services. This is where the story gets interesting. Water Pokémon Master. Water Pokémon Master publicly compared this action to Serebii's much-acclaimed archive of Pokémon the Series screenshots, which was particularly poignant because some of the attackers were from the Serebii forums (as far as I know, though, Joe Merrick was not involved). Now, the legal justice system in Japan is confession based. Had Pokémon stepped in then, it would have been over. But, the storm blew over, and Water Pokémon Master returned to America. Ultimately, Pokémon didn't want to prosecute a human simply for the case of self-enrichment, or to sate the appetite of fickle fans, and they knew it hadn't hurt their advertisement campaign (or their box office sales) at all. The point is, I doubt Water Pokémon Master is losing sleep over making Pokémon upset. The worst he could receive is a Cease and Desist, if he approaches his news program with integrity, like he has so far.
By the way,
@Water Pokémon Master, I think there's a statement you might consider adding to the article. It was shared by a Twitter user named SBCoop89, and was shared with me by a friend, which was how I first found out about this event. (I don't have Twitter myself, so I would never have seen it otherwise.) Hopefully this is what
@geffres is looking for?
Hope you're doing well, Water Pokémon Master.
