Where did Flying Pikachu and Surfing Pikachu come from?

The pair began as magazine paper. Surfing Pikachu came first, as an unnumbered promotional card on a two-card insert, shared with an Imakuni? card, in the September 1997 issue of CoroCoro Comic, on glossy stock. Flying Pikachu, Pikachu borne aloft by balloons, followed in the November 1997 CoroCoro. Both were drawn by Toshinao Aoki, and both carry the same playful rules twist: no Weakness, and Resistance to Fighting, because, as Flying Pikachu's Pokédex entry puts it, "by learning how to fly, Pikachu overcame its weakness to Fighting Pokémon."

Surfing Pikachu has a second, rarer Japanese life. During the JR East Pokémon Stamp Rally of August 9 to 17, 1997, riders collected stamps at stations around Tokyo's Yamanote Line; collecting all thirty earned a two-card set whose Surfing Pikachu is redrawn with Mount Fuji and a bullet train behind the wave, printed on regular stock. It is considerably rarer than the glossy CoroCoro print. A year later both cards flew: in November 1998, All Nippon Airways reprinted them with slightly altered artwork for its Pokémon Jet campaign, two domestic boarding pass stubs redeemable for a set. In December 1998 CoroCoro ran a mail-in draw in which two thousand winners received both cards again, mounted on plain sheets with Jynx, Cubone and Farfetch'd.

The West received the pair last and plainest, as Wizards Black Star Promos 25 and 28 through the Pokémon League in August 2001. They have been reprinted ever since, as secret rares in Rising Rivals, as a 264/XY-P Surfing Pikachu in Japan, and in Celebrations, where both finally evolved, into Flying Pikachu V and VMAX and Surfing Pikachu V and VMAX.