Before I start on the Gold and Silver pokemon, here’s a quick “wrap-up” of the first 151, passionate reminiscing, and a series of categorized “winning” pokemon! IMAGE INTENSIVE – all 151 animated sprites are on the same page!
I love how they put the iconic Pokemon of the franchise (Pikachu, Mewtwo, Blastoise, Charizard, even Psyduck) off to the side, but its fucking Poliwhril who gets center stage. Either because the guy who designed the cover wanted to emphasis “OH NO THIS NEW THING IS HYPNOTIZING YOUR KIDS ITS BAD OLD SCARED PEOPLE!” or because they just really liked Poliwhirl’s design.
It’s quite likely that did occur to the artist, though it’s interesting how Poliwhirl was EVERYWHERE back in the day and it’s probably because it was one of the pokemon included in media packets.
Like, whenever some other entity wants to run an article or a cross-promotion or make stickers or pasta shapes of a popular franchise, they get sent a standardized packet of information, guidelines and materials to draw from, and you could tell which pokemon were included in such a packet by the oddly specific set that cropped up in so much merchandise.
Poliwhirl was probably included in these because its design just stands out so readily, though it’s also known to be Sugimori’s personal favorite and was almost going to be the series mascot over Pikachu at one point. It’s possible the promotional packets were put together around that point too, and were maybe never updated?
I remember being really pleased that Gloom showed up on a lot of stuff as well, being my personal favorite but almost no-one else’s. I guess it, too, was sent out as a go-to example of what Pokemon are like.
Hot cocoa haven 