I deleted what I posted before Baku replied bc I didn't wanna actually talk about this but ig whateverThis. Eevee is literally a Pokemon that was made into a box mascot years later. It's ridiculous to pretend it is not supposed to be one nowadays or that it isn't crazy popular enough for it to happen to begin with. It isn't like they randomly picked any mon as a subtitute for Psyduck in Let's Go or like if it didn't get attention prior to that game.
My point wasn't that Eevee was unpopular but that "mainstream" is an entirely different standard that most Pokemon that people say are popular don't match.
There are only like 5 Pokemon that are mainstream, total. And that number doesn't increase with a Pokemon being put on a box.
If I show someone a silhouette of Pikachu they know it's Pikachu. Probably Charizard too. Show your parents a picture of Greninja, Eevee, Lucario etc. and there is like a 99% chance they do not know it.
I also talked about in the post I deleted that Pokemon have nicher subset categories than people think, Eeveelutions specifically are mostly favored by furries - a lot of people like Eeveelutions but you can bet that the majority of Pokemon 2020 votes for Sylveon were furries, frankly.
This isn't like Pikachu (a comparison I made) because Pikachu isn't even really supposed to be someone's favorite. It's supposed to be a gateway to get you to play.
Eevee and its evolutions have always been significantly more organic. Pikachu got pushed by the anime, Charizard was on the boxart and was the only European Dragon for like two generations, and also was Ash's best Pokemon in the anime.
If people here like it or not, Eevee and its evolutions aren't Pokemon that got to their status (which still isn't at Pikachu level) because Big Pokemon made it that way.
They've tried inorganic mascot campaigns before, by the way. BDSP and PLA, The Year of Sinnoh was not nearly as much advertised in the West, but in JP it was a trojan horse for a push to make Piplup at the level of an Eevee mascot.
They made entire music videos, animations and pushed it a lot that year to try to make it that way but it just didn't work. Eeveelutions have been popular with fans for like decades, and that's why I think it's annoying that people just say "It's a cute Pokemon that Game Freak favored *after two decades*, it's basically normie Pikachu level + boring"