The popularity of Umbreon and Espeon seemed to have tangientally jumped along with interest in Pokémon Colosseum and XD when the retro video game boom of the 2010’s was popping off.
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I remember lapras popularity but I don’t remember anyone liking pidgeot. I like pidgeot but some of that is because of the red tail hawks near by.
It obviously depends because this kind of things were subjective and highly variable even from school to school!
From my experience, Pidgeot was popular because it was viewed as one of the most powerful Ash’s Pokemon in the anime, one of the strongest flying-type available and a very much used one in the games too (it was common for kids to pick up their team at the start of FRLG, and keep over-leveling their starter, pidgey, and so on)
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Yeah, the Umbreon thing was bizarre to me. It just suddenly stonkhyped one day out of nowhere. I remember much preferring Espeon back in the day, at least in the TCG. Likewise agree that Jolteon was always seen as the kingpin(missile) of the eeveelutions. I don’t know what the catalyst for Umbreon’s popularity rise was, or if it was just one thing. Did it feature more heavily in the games? Recipient of S-tier card art or more generally just featured more frequently in the TCG?
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Pidgeot was my favourite underdog card of Jungle. The feeling I got when I pulled that card as a kid… Just 
SQUISITO
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have you seen the Pidgeot from the pokemon trading card game by game?
Also, Blue had a Pidgeot on his team, which brought it more to the forefront, as well.
Funny enough, I’ve always felt that the Rattata/Raticate line was actually the more useful Route 1 choice — at least in the early game — thanks to the fact that Rattata learned Hyper Fang at Level 14.
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I’ve always gone with pidgey. I see the appeal of rattata but I also felt it was too weak at Brock’s gym and I didn’t want to use it post Misty.I would grind for a pikachu to fight her. Next time I do a play through I will switch up my team and see what else works.
A good point I hadn’t considered. I played Colosseum on release and remember thinking that it was pretty cool that they just gave you Umbreon and Espeon for starters. But even then it didn’t exactly feel like a hype moment, just…pretty cool.
But given how Colosseum and XD seem to be more favourably viewed by people who didn’t even play them first time around (didn’t own a GameCube, were too young at the time etc.) I can see that the idea of having those two as your starters would be received with more enthusiasm today.
I had to look that Donphan card up as I was unaware of it but that is definitely a nice looking card!
And yeah, Umbreon isn’t very exciting to use in battle BUT it’s the only one I played around with EV training in Diamond to create a defensive tank/irritant with massive def/sp.def, and bred to have Curse. It gets really difficult to get rid of after a few Curses and combined with Leftovers and Moonlight, it’s a great wall.
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Got an awesome mini game in PkMn Stadium 2. Yeah, it did have a cool introduction. Rollout and elephant. I kinda forget about it myself…
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I think it has a lot to do with the artwork. I’ve always been indifferent to Umbreon as a Pokemon but it has some of my favorite card arts.
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