This week marked the 30th anniversary of the first Pokemon games, and to celebrate, someone ranked the most popular Pokemon based on how often people search for them on Google. The list includes most of the usual suspects with a few surprising anomalies, including Flamig, who made it to second place, just behind Pikachu.
The study was conducted by social gaming website Ace and the results were shared by Nerdbot. The study found this based on data from the last 36 months of US search results Pikachu was the most searched pokemon. People in the US have typed Pikachu into Google more than 685,000 times over the past three years, more than twice as often as the second Pokemon in the study.
Flamigo, what are you doing here?
This is where it gets a little suspicious. In second place we have Flamig. Introduced through Pokémon Scarlet & Violet, Flamigo is basically just a flamingo. It's certainly not the first Pokémon that most people will think of, and almost certainly not the one that nearly 375,000 people will be searching for online over the past 36 months.
The Pokémon Company created 30th anniversary logos with each individual Pokémon
Heracross is getting the love it deserves.
I can't say for sure, of course, but my suspicions tell me that most Flamigo searches can be attributed to people searching for the word flamingo and making a mistake. I sincerely apologize to the Flamigo community if I'm wrong, and please speak up if you're one of the people who have been mass-searching for obscure Pokémon for the past three years.
Dominance Gen 1, Predictable appearance of Gardevoir and Rogue Grafaiai
Most of the other Pokemon on the list further suggest that Flamigo only made it to second place due to repeated typos with flamingos. Charizard is third, Charmleon is right behind him, which is honestly kind of surprising, and then you have Squirtle, Eevee, Mewtwo, and Snorlax in that order following.
There is a lot of Gen 1 representation, which is no surprise either. If it weren't for Flamiga, the entire top 12 would be Pokemon that first appeared in Kanto. When you get down to the last three of the 15 Pokemon listed, you finally get a bigger representation of the later generations. This representation comes in the form of Gardevoir and Lopunny. I can't imagine why these two pokemon are googled so often.
The only other anomaly on the list is the 13th Grafaiai, another Pokemon from Paldea. I guess like Flamigo, Grafaiai made the top 15 because of something people type too fast when using Google. The thing is, I never for the life of me thought of what it could be.
- Created by
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Satoshi Tajiri
- The first movie
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Pokemon: The First Movie
- Latest movie
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Pokemon the Movie: Secrets of the Jungle
- Air date of the first episode
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April 1, 1997
- video games
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Pokemon Scarlet and Violet, Pokemon Legends Arceus, Pokemon Sword and Shield, Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl, Pokemon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon, Pokemon Sun and Moon, Pokemon Black and White, Pokemon Diamond and Pearl, Pokemon GO, Pokemon Snap, Pokemon Unite, Pokemon Unification, New Pokemon S. Pokemon S
