Hi all,
Why have there been no prints of certain Pokemon in the TCG such as Belossom and baby Pokemon such as Magby, Pichu etc… ? Also Abra and Kadabra have not been printed since the ban on Kadabra was lifted. Any specific reason why these Pokemons are neglegted and underrepresented? Can we expect any prints of those soon?
It is annoying that certain Pokemon are always missing in the modern sets but others are way overrepresented. For example, there is almost always a Clefairy in every set.
Tcg set composition has been a random mess since 2007
Except hgss
Only two prints of Budew… ever. Talk about neglected Pokemon!
Baby Pokémon are done dirty!
baby pokemon are practically worthless in the game (though they could add some mechanic to make them viable.) Further still, there are plenty of worthless lower stage mon printed in the game! That’s why they have Rare Candy!
Got a lame stage 1 evo for your BAMFEx card? It’s Cool: Skip it, with RARE CANDY!
So, I digress, and echo what @wisewailmer said. I will add, that for Abra and Kadabra (actually my favorite evo chain) that they have not had many sets in production cycle to create new cards for them. Unfortunately, because they’ve been benched for so long, abra and kadabra might remain in mothballs (though Alakazam Ex and Mega were decent cards, and seemed to receive a lot of care…)
Pokemon does the art for these sets quite a while in advance, so its possible that even though Abra/Kadabra are “free” to use now, they haven’t started doing arts for them just yet
Baby Pokémon aren’t in the TCG anymore because they were introduced to the TCG as a specific mechanic. “Baby Pokémon”, mechanically, were a specific type of card that had unique characteristics and traits. But when this mechanic was dropped from the TCG, they stopped printing those Pokémon entirely. This is why the modern cards you see featuring them are novelty tag team cards or promos since it circumvents the original mechanics.
Of course, the question remains: why not just make them Basic Pokémon and the evolution family can operate like any normal three stage line. There are two reasons for this that I think are most likely.
The card game has tried to move away from evolution for multiple generations in favor of high-power cards that can be played immediately. There could be the belief that the evolution mechanic slows down the card game and makes certain Pokémon harder to play, so they don’t want to make any Pokémon families any more difficult to get the most out of.
It could be canon law. TPC sometimes has rules about how Pokémon can be portrayed and while we don’t know all their rules we can sometimes infer those rules based on seemingly strange decisions. TPC might not want to redefine which Pokémon are Basic, Stage 1, and Stage 2 even for the purposes of the TCG. So if TPC doesn’t want to be flexible on those definitions, making new mechanics for babies is harder.
Edit: I decided to look at things a little more closely because I was curious about something.
First of all, these are the baby Pokémon.
All of these Pokémon have baby status in the games and the majority of these Pokémon do not have cards printed for them anymore. But there’s a couple notable exceptions: Riolu, who has never stopped being printed, and Toxel, who is new for Generation 8 and has seen several cards.
In these instances, both Riolu and Toxel are printed as basic Pokémon and their evolutions are Stage 1. So this sort of tosses the theory of “canon law” aside, but I wonder what is different about Riolu that isn’t true for Pokémon like Munchlax.
I think it’s pretty obvious that some pokemon are more popular than others. No one will want to buy a set if it has banette, solrock, and hitmonlee in it and no charizard, pikachu, or other popular pokemon. I think it’s a shame because it is just shoving some cool pokemon deeper into the dark corner and solidifying standards. On the other hand I agree with what pokemon is doing since there are some pokemon that just aren’t popular and wouldn’t sell well. Just look at the difference between the prices of a giratina and rotom alt arts. Big difference in availability and price yet they are the same rarity from the same set.
Well, they could always pepper in less commonly used mon if they wanted to give them more exposure. Having another budew in a set won’t matter, as long as it’s not the chase card. (although, those budew collectors might kill for it since there ARE so few. 
I think chase cards of less common pokemon or even middle evolution ones would be kickass. It just wouldn’t sell well lol.
Part of me sympathizes with Pokemon, because there are just so many to incorporate. It was much easier to make concise sets and include every pokemon when it was only 151, or even 251. Now with Scarlet & Violet we will probably be over 1,000.
It would be fun to see stage focused sets, like one for middle evolutions, one for basic pokemon, etc. But they have to balance everything with charizords and pikachus, otherwise you end up with emerging powers. 
Something else to consider: The Pokémon Company does not like you, specifically, and chooses not to print your favorite Pokémon in order to upset you, on purpose.
Don’t forget Mantyke.
It’s possible that TPC will delay these Pokemon from getting printed for another ten years because of this post.
I acknowledge that there are now about 1000 of Pokemon, and a few of them are blockbusters and need to be in each set, so the boosters get sold. BUT it would be great if they spread all other Pokemon cards (even the unpopular ones) within the sets in a regular print cycle so people can try to build a complete Pokedex with modern cards. IT does not have to be a super rare full art high end card for each Pokemon. Just an uncommon normal regular half art card …
I would even argue that this has been an issue ever since the beginning of the TCG. One of the best examples of this was Raichu and Magneton randomly being plunked into the Fossil Set as holos (not to mention Haunter; seemed unnecessary to make Haunter a holo when Gengar was also in the set) while Golem was relegated to a mere uncommon.
Speaking of Magneton, it had a strangely omnipresent representation in the WOTC era, appearing in seven of the mainline sets (not including reprint sets). Kind of weird for such an unpopular Pokemon to make so many appearances.
Now to be fair, things were certainly much more orderly overall back then compared to modern sets, but you also had far fewer Pokemon to work with 20+ years ago.
I do agree and the reasoning for many decisions is really odd. WOTC put magneton in 50% of their entire lineup lol.
Still the increase in number of pokemon is in my opinion not a huge issue. I feel like any mega fan could make a great coherant set theme nowadays. The games have pretty coherant themes in each route/town etc dispite a lot of corners being cut in modern games. Just pick an environment type and pick pokemon that would live there like pokemon snap. Easy
At first I thought maybe they gave two-stage Pokémon a pass so if the evolution line contained only two Pokémon the babies would be printed as Basic, but that doesn’t line up with Pokémon like Munchlax, Chingling, and Smoochum. Who knows why they do what they do.
So hopefully the appearance of Riolu and Munchlax are indicators that the other babies are not dead, yet. Hopefully we can see some new prints of those in any upcoming sets.
@xara Bellossom just got a card in S12 Paradigm Trigger 
