The most important vote of the decade – perhaps of all time – has just taken place, and the results are in. More than 52,000 people recently voted on their favourite Pokemon of all time.
Each participant was able to pick their most-loved from the entire lineup of over 800 monsters, so this is as close to a definitive ranking as we might ever get. As it turns out, almost every single Pokemon is somebody’s favourite, as there were only four monsters who didn’t receive any votes at all. Bless ’em.
This ambitious survey was conducted by Reddit user, mamamia1001, who wanted to find out whether or not “every Pokemon is someone’s favourite”, in response to the criticism that has been thrown around in the wake of the news that the upcoming Pokemon Sword & Shield won’t feature every single Pokemon, meaning certain monsters are facing the chop from the Switch games.
An incredible 52,725 cast their votes on the 809 monsters, with an average of 65 per Pokemon. I’m honestly finding it hard to believe that people actually voted for Trubbish and Shuckle, but here we are.
Before we dive into the top 20, let’s have a moment of silence for the four Pokemon that didn’t get any votes at all; Silcoon, Gothita, Eelektrik, and Yungoos. I’m sure there’s someone out there for these poor, rejected beasts.
On a more positive note, let’s take a look at the 20 most popular Pokemon of all time – according to the results of the survey. You probably won’t be surprised that Charizard took the top spot with 1,107 votes, closely followed by Gengar (1,056), and Arcanine (923) rounding out the top three.
Here’s the full top 20:
Charizard (1,107)
Gengar (1,056)
Arcanine (923)
Bulbasaur (710)
Blaziken (613)
Umbreon (607)
Lucario (604)
Gardevoir (585)
Eevee (581)
Dragonite (551)
Absol (542)
Typhlosion (534)
Ampharos (529)
Squirtle (523)
Flygon (510)
Ninetails (471)
Tyranitar (451)
Infernape (443)
Snorlax (433)
Torterra (430)
As you can see, there aren’t a ton of surprises in there – although I would’ve expected Mewtwo over maybe Torterra or Bulbasaur. The rest tracks with what I always imagined the most popular Pokemon were though, especially the top ten.
The survey also broke down the generations by number of votes. Would you believe that the original 151 took away the most votes by a pretty massive margin? Gen One bagged 18,289 of votes, which was nearly double second place – Gen Three with 9,469. This was followed by Gen Two, and then Four, Five, Six, and Seven in order.
You can find the entire rundown of Pokemon from first to last right here. All of my favourites managed to get into the top 20, so I’m pretty happy – but you know how intense people get about these cartoon monsters.
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Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn’t gotten out of his mid 00’s emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism & Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.