It's Trading Card Day, Piggies! Gotta catch 'em all! 🐹 💛 🤎 💛 🥕 🥕 🥕

Trading cards didn’t begin as games at all. In the late 19th century, small illustrated cards were slipped into products like cigarettes to stiffen the packaging, and into food and gum as promotional inserts. Over time, these advertising “trade cards” became collectible, and by the early 20th century they evolved into sports cards featuring baseball and football players.

By the 1990s, trading cards had transformed again — this time into full strategic games, most famously the Pokémon franchise’s Pokémon Trading Card Game and Yu-Gi-Oh! Trading Card Game. These games combine collecting with gameplay mechanics, deck-building, and competitive tournaments. Fans also create custom cards and artwork, continuing the long tradition of imaginative card design.

And there really is a commercial Pokémon inspired by a guinea pig! Morpeko!

Morpeko is an Electric/Dark-type Pokémon introduced in Generation VIII (the Galar region games, Pokémon Sword and Shield). Morpeko is clearly modeled on a guinea pig (with a dash of hamster and chipmunk charm).

Its signature feature is Hunger Switch, which causes it to alternate between two forms:

Full Belly Mode – cheerful, bright-eyed, with a yellow Electric-type aura

Hangry Mode – grumpy, darker coloring, associated with Dark-type energy

In battle, Morpeko’s move Aura Wheel even changes type depending on which form it’s in — Electric in Full Belly Mode and Dark in Hangry Mode. In the anime, Morpeko appears as the constantly snacking companion of Team Rocket’s James, with an insatiable appetite that often leads to comic chaos!

Wheek! Wheek!