The most overused Pokemon designs

Coming up with new Pokemon these days must be a tough job. With over 500 Pokemon on the roster to date, some overlap is inevitable and quite forgivable. But even in the early days of Pokemon, designers were doubling and even tripling up on Pokemon based on the same animal or on a similar design template.

Come with us, Pokemon fans, trainers and champions, as we point out the most redundant Pokemon in our Pokedex…

Huggable pink blobs

The amazing thing about these adorable butterballs is that aside from Blissey, these were all introduced in the original roster of 151 Pokemon. The pink blobs introduced in Pokemon Red and Blue can be divided into the big-eyed (Jigglypuff/Wigglytuff) or beady-eyed varieties (Clefairy/Clefable, Chansey).

Jigglypuff had a memorable run on the animated series, where he'd go around causing mischief by putting people to sleep with his lullaby and drawing all over their faces with a marker. He was totally badass. But what did Clefairy do again? Well, he did have his own episode in the show ("Clefairy Tales," episode 62), in which he... gets beat up by a Jigglypuff?! That's pretty rough, man. Poor Clefairy.

That's not the worst thing to happen to Clefairy though - he was actually originally supposed to be Ash's first Pokemon and main sidekick in the series, but for whatever reason was swapped out for Pikachu at the last minute. He was also slated to be the main mascot for the series until Pikachu's sudden popularity completely crushed his chances. How does he manage that base 140 happiness stat after everything that's happened to him?

And we can't forget about sweet Chansey, whose place in the Pokemon universe is cemented by her vocation as a nurse at the Pokemon Centers. Her combination of rarity and low catch rate can make her a frustrating Pokemon to obtain, but of all the other pink blobs she's arguably the most useful in battle, especially when evolved into her final form, Blissey.

And just to be thorough, don't forget their prevolutions:

Gen V is set to introduce another pink blobby duo with Munna and its evolution, Musharna, which reminds us of a pink blob version of Drowzee:

Honorary pink blob shout-out also goes out to the Slowpoke family.

Ducks

When looking at all four generations of Pokemon, it's not that ducks are overdone so much as that the first generation immediately doubled up on ducks. With so many animals to choose from in the world, why devote three spaces in your limited line up of potential Pokemon to ducks?

Further evidence that someone on the Pokemon design team has an unusual affection for the Anatidae family, several non-duck Pokemon seem to have been gifted with unusually duck-like features.

Oh Magmar, what are we going to do with you?
 

Boring birds

There are tons of bird Pokemon, and we're OK with that. Psyduck is cool in our books, and the same goes for Honchkrow, and hey, even Farfetch'd and Chatot. But too many bird Pokemon are simply too boring, and too similar to their real-life counterparts to make interesting Pokemon.

Every generation, it seems mandatory to introduce at least one evolutionary family of completely uninspired birds, and it looks like Black and White will be no exception. Despite Mamepato's total resemblance to a common pigeon (pigeons are actually remarkably cool birds, by the way), we still have hope that his final evolution will be something more interesting. Chances are small though, if you take into account bird Pokemon history.