I found this cool interview with Ken Sugimori and Atsuko Nishida describing the journey of Pikachu’s design. There are lots of fun details including a recount of the (thankfully) scrapped third evolution, which included fangs and horns.
This was new information for me, although I imagine the hardcore Pika collectors maybe already have read about this stuff somewhere else 
(ahem…@quuador and @justinator).
Neat info, good find! Did not know about a third evolution, no. 
Quite a fun article to read, and loads of things I didn’t knew. Like Pikachu originally being a daifuku with eyes…
I also didn’t knew about Gorochu. Kinda wish they added a picture of its original design, because now I’m curious. 
Something I do know, which isn’t mentioned in the article, is that Clefairy was originally planned to be Ash’ partner, but they switched it to Pikachu. I wonder if there would have been 1,000 Clefairy cards now if they had started like that.
Greetz,
Quuador
I’m interested to see if any forum member can come up with some interesting interpretation of what Gorochu may have looked like.
I really like the one right below the Goron-chu. I feel like I’d be okay with this as the final evolution.
The third one is pretty cool haha.
But hmm it just wouldn’t suit it now, given the kawaiiness and sweetness of pikachu and alola Raichu in general.
