Ah... Pidgeot and Beedrill. Two of the most bad-ass, yet technically wimpy, Pokémon ever to feature in the dreams of young kids. I feel like an homage is in order.
Both were among the first Pokémon you ever caught. They were both likely to stick in your party until final evolution, Beedrill because it evolved early, and Pidgeot because it was decently powerful and very useful, so it stuck with your team from day on and throughout your entire adventure (I don't think there ever existed a Pidgeot in R/B/Y that didn't eventually learn Fly). And both had really cool designs too.
Beedrill was featured in the Anime as the worst thing you could ever encounter early in your adventure. It was a bug more than a metre tall, it could fly a lot faster than you could run, it had a buzzing cry as loud and intense as a chainsaw, and it spared no opportunity to show off its weapons: Stingers the size of daggers, dripping with venom. Worse still, it attacked in swarms. If encountered in real life, this thing was guaranteed to ruin your day.
Pidgeot, on the other hand, was a companion to be trusted. It smacked around Bug types without any resistance, and it helped greatly against Grass and Fighting types too. It could hit most enemies in the game with neutral attacks, while being hit neutrally in return too. It was the sort of Pokémon that could always be trusted to do the job, or transport you around whenever you needed. It could bring your battle-weary and poisoned team safely back to the Pokémon centre in an instant. Its flying success during TPP is a testament to the pure reliability of this 'mon. Its design was also awesome, it was big enough to ride on, and it was easily pictured swooping down from the sky, screaming a high-pitched battle cry before plunging its talons into unlucky prey.
Too bad, then, that in the power department, both of those Pokémon, by most objective measures, sucked.
Beedrill sported one of the crappiest movepools ever seen in Pokémon, and its stats were sub-par even by the time you reached the second gym. It was designed to be an early-game Pokémon, being useful for the first part of your adventure, but falling in relevance faster than a Golem on a diving board, so you'd be incentivized to swap it for another Pokémon later on (after all, the game would be poorly designed if you could catch any Pokémon you needed for the entirety of the game within the first five minutes).
Pidgeot's problem wasn't objective crappiness, it was relative crappiness. Face it, most other Flying Pokémon could do Pidgeot's job just as well, if not better. The only thing Pidgeot has going for it is that it appears conveniently early, so you catch it and stick with it. It's decent enough to pull its weight throughout RBY, but so is its cousin Fearow, and Dodrio outclasses it due to better STAB and higher Speed and Attack. And don't even get me started on the Legendary Birds. Even in Gen. I, Pidgeot was the underdog on the competitive scene. In later generations, it was accompanied or surpassed by a plethora of other Flying Pokémon, and it was never given any tools to claim any place on a pedestal. Pidgeot is a good in-game utility 'mon, the bread and butter of a team, but there are so many Pokémon out there that can do all its jobs better.
Let's hope the Mega Evolutions will give Beedrill and Pidgeot the badassery they so rightfully deserve. Both are immensely cool Pokémon, but victims to Pokémon's version of a caste system - both being early-game Pokémon, designed to be outclassed.
