The Pokémon Company has apologised to fans after scalpers besieged the Van Gogh Museum earlier this week, buying up most of the Pokémon Center x Van Gogh special edition products and almost immediately selling them for heavily inflated prices on online auction sites.

The Pokémon exhibition at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam opened earlier this week, where a load of new Pokemon x Van Gogh merch was available, including a free trading card of a Van Gogh Pikachu designed to look like he was painted by the Dutch master himself.

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Perhaps unsurprisingly, though, scalpers were quick to descend on the Van Gogh Museum, leaving many fans disappointed.

"We apologise for all the fans eagerly awaiting our Pokémon Center x Van Gogh Museum release today," the company said in a statement.

"Due to overwhelming demand, all our products from this collection have sold out. We understand this is disappointing to many who were looking to our official email and social media channels for guidance on how and when to purchase.

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"We are actively working on ways to provide more Pikachu with Grey Felt Hat promo cards for fans shopping at Pokémon Center in the future," the statement concluded, although the company stopped short of revealing when, only saying that "details will be released at a later day".

The statement has been met with a mixed reaction from fans, with some on the Pokémon TCG subreddit community sharing disappointment that the company is not doing more to tackle scalping.

"All this does is tell scalpers keep doing what you're doing, we won't stop you," said one unhappy fan.

"I don't understand why they can't just make more mugs, or plushies, or posters," added another. "They certainly have the capabilities to do it, and the Van Gogh Museum exhibit is supposed to last for months, but they sell out in a few hours and are like "lol oops'."