Has any here have a child? I have a 7 year old who i have played pokemon with since he was 5..
These boxes are how children WANT to play, i can tell you my son and his friends just want a deck full of pokemon, watch them open boosters trainer are thrown aside, energies are a nusicance. This kind of product is right up the 5-10 year old player, whos parents are probably never going to bring or send their child near a league.
Pokemon has been smart here and just tapped into this demo of pre -junior, and for that i salute them they are giving kids EXACTLY what they want. Not what pro players expecting a 10 year old to rock up with a championship deck think they want.
*Cough cough*
heh. There are people at my league who are 7 and are the exact opposite from what you are describing. Even my cousins, who are 5 and 7 know that trainers are important. Sure, kids can have this mindset, but this deck just ENFORCES that. That's not good, because as most of us know, trainers are one of the most crucial bits of building a deck.
I really think that if any kid wants a deck full of pokemon, then you either should never let them around a competitive deck, or force them to play a competitive deck.
If children see this in the store, they will think that they are doing the right thing and that they SHOULD play a no trainer deck, and that is BAD.
Ok. Imagine this. You don't know how to solve a rubik's cube, so you go and buy a cheap one off of amazon. They come with these neat little instructions that teach you how to solve it. You go ahead and try it, learning the beginners algorithms and before you know it, you can solve a rubik's cube.
So you are feeling pretty happy with yourself, so you practice and decide you are really good, and should go to a competition. You get last place, and you wonder to yourself, "wow that was sad everyone else is just so much better than I am, i should just give up" but what you DON'T realize is that there are much faster methods out there, such as CFOP and Roux. But when you started, you completely ignored these methods, thinking that yours was good enough.
This directly applies to pokemon.
A beginner player playing this deck vs a normal theme deck would be similar to randomly turning the cube vs the beginner method. And a theme deck vs a competitive deck is like using beginners vs CFOP. You just can't win, no matter how good you are or how much you try. Sure, you can get lucky, but that is not something you should rely on.
This theme deck enforces that "beginners method is better" but it really isn't. If someone was a beginning cuber, sure, they should learn beginners, but learn something else after you get it. This theme deck is just like beginners method, except it doesn't even work to solve the cube.
TL,DR: dont buy this, or buy it for anyone else