The Pokémon Company Reveals Top 30 Pocket Monsters, According To Japanese Twitter Poll

Damn, some surprising choices in there. Dedenne in first? Magnemite? Buzzwole???

Taste really is subjective isn't it.

Swampert should’ve been first.

Well, I think that settles it: They have no justification to cram Gen I Pokemon in our face all of the time when in reality, people like Pokemon from all generations.

Pikachu lost to his clone.

There's something wrong in that list. Meowth is not there!

Sableye?! Now we're talking! Glad to see a personal favorite so high up, especially since I feel like I'm alone in my sableye love.

I’m clearly way out of the game in Pokémon. I know only a handful of these and the charizard and pikachu I thought would be in the top 5 at least were further down the list.

@Yosher I remember back in Black 2 and White 2, there was a whole thing about trading Magnemites. It was the one pokemon you wanted to leave on the GTS: Magnemite for Magnemite. Over and over and over. Millions of Magnemites being traded all over the world.

Why? Well, to populate the Join Avenue! If you interacted with other players, you received them as visitors there. Magnemite trading was our way to farm them!

Butterfree will forever be my favorite pokemon of all time ♡

YESSS CINCINNO!!! One of those pokemon I never would've thought of training but so glad I randomly chose to catch and use them

Sawk is my boy. 😍

Charizard or Pikachu not in 1st!? Good.

Japan always turn out the absolute worst results in these polls. The Final Fantasy one was the same.

Dedenne is one of my top favorite Pokemon, so cool to see Japanese Twitter affirm my Pokemon preferences~

Also great to see that there's more deep pulls than just the usual favorites (with all respect to those, of course).

Scolipede is one ofmy favourites glad to see it up there.

I really love bug pokemon some of my favourites are Yanmega, Vikavolt, Golisopod, mega beedril, scizor.

I do really like Gigantamax Orbeetle it's a UFO damn it xD

My top is either Centiskorch or Scolipede. I had an all bug team in SW/SH but stopped playing after i found out Scolipede was locked behind DLC...kinda bummed me out since i was saving my last slot for them.

I find your lack of Charmander disturbing

@Harmonie i think its the west thats obsessed with gen 1

Wow, lots of Pokemon that are nowhere near to be among my favourite.

No swampert or mudkip what?!

The lack of love for Mismagius is very disturbing. 😐

@Eel Why Magnemite in particular and not an easy to catch Pokemon like the rodent or bird Pokemon found in the first route?

Interesting to note that over half the pokemon, 16/17, are round/cute pokemon. Which makes sense cause Japan LOVES cute stuff.

At least Mimikyu made it

Oshawott at 9 I can respect, but this list feels manipulated.

@Porky I wouldn't know why specifically it, but apparently it has to do with the Japanese name of Magnemite: Coil. The constant circling of Magnemites generating visitors was like magnets going through a coil to generate electricity.

In B2W2, it's also an early pokemon that is particularly easy to find and catch.

Funny. With how hard Game freak promotes them, I was expecting Charizard to be #1 and Eevee/Pikachu to be #2.

No Dewgong love T_T but yay for Luxray!!!

It kills me that in all likelihood, the takeaway from Gen 5's (relatively) weaker sales was that they need to cater to the casual audience that's always going to hold Gen 1 on a pedestal due to nostalgia.

Good gravy... I recognized fewer of these than I expected.

Buzzwole? Eew. Blacephelon and Guzzlord is where it's at.

And Dedenne totally deserves the top spot. Love that little cutie.

I can't believe that hideous Inteleon cracked the top 20. That thing wouldn't even make my top 800, and I actually liked Sobble.

My favorite Pokémon will ALWAYS be Pikachu

@ARPK I reaaaally don't think the "casual audience" and the gen 1 lovers have any overlap at all

Alolan raichu is better than all on that list.

@Eel That sounds really weird but also cool and now I'm sad I never knew about it when I played it back then!

@TossedLlama It was appointed as tourism ambassador for the prefecture of Iwate (on account of 岩手/Iwate literally meaning ‘rock hand’), but not Japan as a whole.

No pictures? alright then, keep your secrets!

...Making me google what they look like rather than showing me pictures aye Nintendo Life...

That poll has a distinct lack of Moltres, or any bird-like legendary for that matter.

I found the problem, they made the poll on twitter.

A much better list than the usual gen1 filled nostalgia lists that sites like this generate! I am surprised by some of these answers though, Buzzswole? Barbaracle?

Let's be honest, Dedenne is Pikachu done right. For starters, it actually looks like a mouse. And the way it is often presented holding its tail reminds one of the creature's origin (i.e. rodents chewing on electrical wires).

Klink was robbed again

Poor Popplio and Litten. . .

Sableye came in THIRD!? HOLY HECK! THE JAPANESE KNOW BEST! <3

These are really weird results, as others have pointed out. I mean it's great that so many people love some of these seemingly less popular Pokemon but I'm not sure I believe that 15000 people genuinely voted for Barbaracle.

Thats literally just proof that polls like this don't work. Whether it's just Japan or worldwide, there's no way that Dedenne is the most popular Pokémon, among other obvious outliers. Barbaracle was another giveaway. Whether it's a fan campaign to vote for specific Pokémon or something else, an accurate list like this seems to be simply impossible. Which really ruins all the other polls that I thought were accurate in the past. Can't trust a single one of them now. We may never know what the actual 30 most popular Pokémon are.

Lots of random and ugly picks I would never have guessed, to be honest.

@nessisonett That's cultural differences for you. Thankfully not everything is tainted by Californian influence.

@SmaggTheSmug Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

Thank God Charizard wasn't top 15

Where's Rowlet?! I mean how could you not love that lazy, sleepy, little ball of feathers?

@Baker1000 Release him!

@Kieroni I mean, that's fair. When I say "casual", I'm thinking of the genwunner stereotype. You know, the folks who played R/B/Y as kids but grew out of it and never looked back. There was a pretty consistent marketing push of first-gen Pokemon during Gens 6 & 7, and I'm probably looking for a way to rationalize TPC's decision-making process. Still, those lapsed fans are a rapidly declining market share, and there's no guarantees they buy the games or merchandise in the present day, even for their kids. The modern casual market is more likely rooted in Pokemon Go, and a lot of that consistent userbase lacks any nostalgia for Gen 1. So I get what you're saying. It's hard to quantify and probably not worth making generalizations over.

The data sampled for the poll is pretty interesting though. Twitter's popularity in Japan peaks around the same level for the combined 13-29 demographic, but sharply declines for each age demographic after that. If we're assuming the relatively small number of users who were polled are being honest with their choices, they're pretty interesting picks.

@Veledwin You're kidding right?
Just because you don't agree with the top choice means it's "literally proof" that the poll was rigged?

@dBackLash That's been the popular narrative since 2016 US elections.

Barbaracle with over 15,000 votes.....
Yet no gengar, mew, mewtwo, dragonite, whimsicott or celebi?

Where are my Goodra and Togedemaru?

@dBackLash Not kidding at all. Has nothing to do with whether I agree with it or not. Any Pokémon fan that knows what they're talking about knows damn well that Dedenne and Barbaracle are nowhere near that popular. Doesn't take a genius to figure that out. If you don't understand that from just looking at the list then there's nothing I can do for you 👋