I'm also starting to get the same feeling with Gengar.
"Hey, we need a Ghost-type Pokemon for this part"
"Gengar"
"But we've given a Gengar to Ash in the main anime, there were episodes focusing on it Gigantamaxing, had a PokeToon starring a Gengar that turns a girl into a Gengar, it's in Unite; Don't you think we should give another Ghost-type the spotlight?"
"... Just use Gengar"
I think this is less and less true as generations go on. Gengar IS a very iconic Gen I Pokémon and accordingly receives a lot of spotlight, but it's far from the only Ghost-Type to receive a lot of exposure. Most notably, while Rowlet isn't a Ghost-Type Pokémon itself, it does evolve into Decidueye, and Rowlet has received huge amounts of exposure (also being in Unite as of a couple months ago too). Around Halloween, of course, lots of Ghost-Type Pokémon get spotlighted, similar to how many Ice-Type Pokémon get spotlighted around Christmas time. Mimikyu is a breakout Ghost-Type star too, who has received a lot of attention.
Ghost-Type has a lot more of an endemic issue, which is that there just aren't that many of them. The only type rarer than it is Ice-Type, but at least the Ice-Type often gets its own compulsory route. The Ghost-Type is almost always reduced to an optional side area or swift route -- an excuse to put the two or three new Ghost-Type Pokémon introduced that gen. Most bafflingly, Gens VI and VII combined Ghost- and Grass-Type
way too much, at around half of the non-mythical or -legendary new Ghost-Type Pokémon across both gens.
It feels like Ghost-Type Pokémon should feel way more individually special due to their scarcity, and for the first few gens that was pretty true. In Gen II Misdreavus was post-game exclusive and thus inherently rare; Shedinja was a total secret that players only ever stumbled across if they still didn't have 6 Pokémon once their Nincada hit level 20 -- its existence isn't mentioned anywhere in the game; Spiritomb is locked behind the underground and used by Cynthia, while Rotom is in the TV only after midnight, Drifloon can only be found on Fridays and Froslass is a trade evo... there's an intentional scarcity and mystery to Ghost-Type Pokémon that was supposed to make them feel special. During this stage, Gastly was the "common" Ghost-Type Pokémon that could be thrown into spooky areas to add atmosphere (granted in Hoenn Shuppet/Duskull do the same, Gastly is unavailable). That's just due to it being iconic and how it was in the original games; if Phantump were a Gen I design, it would have taken that spot and been Gengar levels of popular.
Since the soft reboot of Gen V, they've never returned to this sense of mystery behind the Ghost-Type, and I really think that's a shame. Now Ghost-Type Pokémon tend to just be random encounters, outside of Dhelmise' absurdly hidden nature in Alola, which honestly doesn't feel special so much as frustrating. There's intentional scarcity and mystery, and then there's forcing players to grind.
Pikachu315111 said:
Eh, it's still looks unappealing, mainly because I don't get WHY its designed to look like a baby wearing a diaper. What's the connection with it being a Poison- and Electric-type? What's the connection with Toxtricity who are based after punk rock guitarists (with a gimmick that one is an electric guitar and the other a bass guitar based on their nature)?
Like, were they going for a "wild child" concept (
which is a name of a rock band and of several rock songs)? When I think of a "wild child" I don't think of a baby in diapers, I think of this:
Give it similar proportions (though smaller obviously), messy electric "hair", look like its wearing torn clothes, and instead of the "strings" on its chest it can have a singular volume dial it can "crank up".
I'm pretty sure Toxtricity was a regular 3-stage design before they decided to push it as the Gen VIII mascot. They cut a middle evo that probably would be similar to this. Lucario and Zoroark are both 2-stage lines, and there's a case to be made that part of their appeal is that they
don't have that awkward teenage phase that many other Pokémon do. But punk is something that is directly associated with teenagers, or at least people in their young 20s, so cutting the teenager for the baby design was 100% a mistake. On the other hand, if they had kept it a 3-stage line, I think Toxel's existence becomes more reasonable. It sorta shows a development into becoming a punk rocker that would be cool.
