I was a cute little piggy before it was cool

325: Spoink

The Psychic type has a tendency to bring us some real weirdo designs, and Spoink is no exception! Spoink is a little gray piglet with no legs, instead just using its coil-shaped tail to bounce around with! What a fun idea for a pig monster! What makes it Psychic is how it clutches a crystal ball-like pearl between its ears, thus channeling its Psychic power. It's always on the hunt for a new one too. And the Pokedex, in all its needlessly dark fashion, states that Spoink's bouncing is actually what keeps its heart pumping, and if it ever stops bouncing then it dies. We're gonna choose to believe a sleeping or unconscious Spoink will just bounce on its own. No reason!

Spoink is probably also a visual pun on the phrase "pearls before swine", meaning to give up something valuable to someone who doesn't deserve it. But Spoink DOES deserve it! It's a good piggy! Pigs are too adorable to deserve being synonyms for nasty things like toxic people or cops!

Personal Score: 7.5/10

Doesn't look so grumpy to me

326: Grumpig

Out of all the times a Gen 3 Pokemon's evolution feels like it falls behind its prevo, this one hurts the most. Spoink was such a fun design but then Grumpig just, gets rid of everything? No more sproingy tail that it has to constantly jump with Or Else, not even a pearl! Well, it has a handful of tiny, black pearls, but it ain't much, is it? Grumpig is almost a textbook example of how annoying it is when a Pokemon's evolution abandons all of its defining features. Grumpig isn't bad, but it's a lot less special when everything that made Spoink fun is not only gone, but not really replaced with anything interesting.