Everyone has suddenly forgotten about Twilight, dug out their witch hats and pre-booked cinema tickets when it’s not an Orange Wednesday. As when the final credits of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows roll, students won’t just be bidding goodbye to the ‘boy who lived’, but closing a formative chapter of their childhood too.
As anyone who has seen the films will unquestionably have noticed, the main characters have grown up... and so has its audience. When Daniel Radcliffe observed on the Graham Norton Show on Friday that “we have a fan base that grows up with the films”, he hit the nail on the head. Essentially we are the ‘Harry Potter generation’, the children who matured with Pottermania and lived our own magical adventures through the boy wizard and his two best friends.
Pottermania swept the nation in the late 90s; with the arrival of the first book casting a spell over children in 67 languages. “I’m trying to think of a time when Harry Potter wasn’t such a massive part of Western culture and it’s pretty tricky” says James,  an Edinburgh student.

So what is it that causes a phenomenon like Pottermania? Sociologist Malcolm Gladwell descibes fads using epidemiology. He suggests ideas are spread across a group of people like a disease. “Typical behaviour for epidemics is that they can blow up and then die out really quickly, and even the smallest change - like one child with a virus - can get them started. [If you study social epidemics] you’ll be convinced that behaviour can be transmitted from one person to another as easily as the flu or measles can.”  He also explains that anyone can create a social epidemic through word of mouth. “The virtue of an epidemic, after all, is that just a little input is enough to get it started, and it can spread very, very quickly.”

Yet  there have also been so many other crazes of our age - what happened to them? Speaking to Edinburgh students, most were quick to mention Pokemon cards.  It suddenly descends into a conversation of ‘who was your favourite character?’ and  ‘Charizard could have most definitely kicked Pickachu’s ass’. You can’t pretend you didn’t rush to the corner shop after school to spend your parent’s hard earned money on shiny packets of Pokemon cards. After all, you ‘Gotta catch em all’. 

As editor of the Toy Report, Christopher Byne resigned himself to the fad, commenting in 2000 “Now wherever the kids are, Pokemon is there too.” Luckily the Pokemon fad didn’t continue long after primary school, at least not if you weren’t a gaming geek.

There were also countless other shameful crazes of the 1990s. Furbies. This was the phenomenon for those children who wanted a cuddly toy that was not cuddly, looked like a gremlin and wouldn’t shut up.  After the inital success of the Furby, two new lines were introduced called Furby Babies and Furby Friends, however for unknown reasons their demand in the past ten years has dramatically dropped.

Yoyos. A string on a wheel that fixated girls and boys alike. Student Molly Maccormack apparently collected “ tens of YoYos. I have no clue why. At the time I just wanted them in all the different colours.” This obsession is reportedly making a comeback due to the recession.
Tamagotchis. A pet in your pocket that you fed and cleaned and played games with (all using tiny buttons) until it grew up. The game swept the UK in 1990s, but didn’t ignite as the pet was rather boring. Also if you forgot it, it died and children aren’t especially known for their responsible attitudes.

This list does not even include Beanies,  Saved By The Bell, flares,  Girl Power, etc. So what makes Harry Potter the special phenomenon of our generation?

Back before Harry Potter, our age was known as the ‘PlayStation generation’. Since then many public figures have lined up to credit J.K.Rowling with inspiring young people to read. Edinburgh student, Sophia, agrees “I honestly don’t remember any books before Harry Potter.  J.K. Rowling’s book series has achieved cultural domination and that’s great, I only wish they had never finished”.

This interest in Harry Potter may lie in our age’s yearning for something beyond this world. In a generation that saw the dawn of internet, social networking and un-brick-sized phones, everything has never been so connected and tangible. Harry Potter represents a magical mystery world to which we can escape, narrated by understandable characters. The Classics-educated Rowling also absorbed scores of genres and themes from her literary heritage, merging the old with a new to capture the reader’s imagination.
Who knows what will happen to Harry Potter after the second Deathly Hallows is released? Probably people will set off in search of the Florida theme park to satisfy their Potter fix. Artist Jim Henson, once observed that “Nobody creates a fad. It just happens.” Well, Harry Potter certainly happened to us.