IT'S PIKACHU!

109: Koffing

This Pokemon's certainly an oddball. With Grimer being a Pokemon of toxic waste or aquatic pollution, one could say Koffing is the equivalent for air pollution. The only missing member of this trifecta is a Pokemon to represent a landfill or ground pollution, and it remains missing for the longest dang time. Like, a decade and a half or so, until Trubbish in Gen 5 was introduced?

But ah, tangents. As for Koffing itself, I've grown to like it a lot more over the years since the last time I reviewed it. It's little more than a big purple ball with poison-spewing pimple pores all over it. And does it need to be anything else? It's a living balloon filled with gas, after all! The skull and crossbones on its "belly" are on the nose a bit, but not enough to ruin anything. Plus look at that face. So much personality!

Imagine having an existence so sad you're named after pained breathing.

110: Weezing

And Weezing gets even more grody with it growing a second head and a weird "neck" thing. Possibly meant to evoke the imagery of molecules? Either way, it sells the look of pollutant mutant all the way, and it gets a total change in visage to match as well, with a couple of dreary, pained faces to remind you that this thing shouldn't be alive. Maybe it is just Bogleech's taste rubbing off on me a bit but man reading back on my first review I did not like these two very much and learning that weirds me out now. And now I'm just back to thinking how weird it is that an opinion can shift so drastically in such a short amount of time.

The only thing that feels outright missing from this line is the Flying type. Like, they're gas-filled balloon creatures right? That are already floating anyways? Why not have them be Poison/Flying?! And it only got worse later on when a precious ability slot got eaten up by Levitate when it could've just been Flying type and immune to Ground anyway.