Today we feature a guest article from Nick Coffin who between fighting koalas with his bare hands and arm wrestling the homeless, pitches article ideas for Cracked.com. Be gentle, it is his first time.

Pokemon Red. It was my first video game, alongside my Gameboy Color, my first console (it was the classic purple). Pokemon got me hooked into videogames, is the source of many childhood memories, and is part of what made me the anti-social nerd I am today. But looking back, it was a pretty messed up game. The name means “pocket monsters” for God’s sake. Here are a few reasons why you may want to avoid showing your kids/grandkids/robot spawn your pokemans.

9. Jynx

Do I need to explain why this thing doesn’t belong in a kid’s show? This is the only thing that could cause someone to use “racist”, “drag queen”, and “pokemon” in the same sentence. To be fair, Jynx has gotten rid off of the BlackFace and now has purple skin. So you can remove the “racist” from the previous statement and replace it with “fucking creepy”.

Much better!

According to various Pokedex entries, “Jynx walks rhythmically, swaying and shaking its hips as if it were dancing. Its motions are so bouncingly alluring, people seeing it are compelled to shake their hips without giving any thought to what they are doing”, and “It cries sound like human speech. However, it is impossible to tell what it is trying to say”. So this pokemonster basically walks around dancing and shouting gibberish, and causes people (who are apparently turned on by racism) to dance alongside. The final nail in the coffin comes from its signature move “Lovely Kiss”. The attack does no damage, but it puts the opponent to sleep, where I can only assume a completely different type of damage is inflicted afterwards.

But hey, it’s not like they’re ever going to make another pokemon based off a racial stereotype. Not after that monstrosity. Nope, never again. Not in a million years.

Ay caramba…

8. Banette

As an unwritten rule, ghost pokemon tend to be a mix between creepy and awesome. Banette however, floats deep into the “creepy” section until it resembles something from a Stephen King novel more than something from Pokemon. See that smile? It doesn’t have a smoking problem; it’s actually just a zipper. Applaud yourself if the image of some sort of Pokemon gimp didn’t immediately spring to mind. If you need me, I’ll be rinsing my eyes with bleach.

The worst part is the creepy backstory. It was originally a doll that got thrown away, but got possessed by Shuppet, a ghost pokemon that feeds on the dark emotions in people’s hearts. It wanders around garbage dumps and back alleys looking for the child that abandoned it. Keep in mind that “strong feelings of hatred” helped give this doll life, so don’t think this Pokemon is looking for a tearful reunion (unless the tears are from the child that abandoned it, as they are consumed by an indescribable fear).

I’m not sure how, but Banette is also able to generate energy for laying curses by sticking itself with pins. I’m sure that this type of self-inflicted harm is totally appropriate for kids, and has nothing to do with the immense number of craptastic emo bands floating around.

7. Cubone

At first glance, this seems like a pretty badass pokemon. It attacks its enemies while wearing someone else’s skull and using their bones as a weapon. It’s fun (read: terrifying) to imagine that it could attack its enemies by strangling them with the intestines from an enemy that it killed by using another enemy’s fingers, which it got by killing an enemy with another pokemon’s gallbladder, etc. In short, this pokemon looks like the most ruthless thing in existence.

The truth: The skull on its head? Funny story: After a Cubone is born, its mother dies (see? Hilarious!). It doesn’t say why this happens, or why it happens to every single one, so let’s just assume that the pokegods really have it in for these guys. What does this have to do with the skull? Easy, soon-to-be mentally scarred chum! The motherless Cubone, not wanting to waste a good carcass, wears his mother’s skull as a mask. While it does this it constantly mourns for its dead mom. So think Norman Bates, but a pokemon.

6. Weezing

According to the pokedex:”When it inhales poisonous gases from garbage, its body expands, and its insides smell much worse. ” In short, it’s a floating ball that smells of death and eats garbage. It should be noted that this is the evolved form of Koffing who looks much happier by comparison.

Pease kill me!

But why the extra head? Some pokedex entries say that when two Koffings meet at a place where two kinds of posion gas meet, and over many years, the two koffing fuse into one of the most depressing things I’ve encountered so far. That’s not evolution, that’s a horrible mutation. It’s like saying conjoined twins are the next step in human evolution, which goes against everything I learned in Darwin’s Origin of the Species and my “X-Men” comics. It’s more likely that Koffing, after years of being a round, floating cigarette that’s lit 24/7, got cancer and grew a tumor that turned into another head.

5. Mewtwo

In the first generation of Pokemon games, Mewtwo was the last Pokemon you could catch, and you needed to beat a group of trainers known as the “Elite Four” just to get access to the cave he lived in. Yes, the most powerful Pokemon in the game lives in a cave. It should be noted that this is a pokemon who has psychic powers, telekinesis, the ability to fly, and is incredibly smart, so it’s safe to assume that he was a recluse.

But what is it about Mewtwo that makes him an obvious choice for this list? Maybe it’s because after all these years, he’s still the strongest Pokemon, or his eerie resemblance to Frieza, or maybe it’s because his goal in life is to eliminate the human race using an army of Pokemon clones (Hint: It’s not the first two). According to the backstory provided in Pokemon: The First Movie (aka Pokemon: The One-and-a-Half Hour Commercial), Mewtwo was a clone of Mew, created by scientists who wanted to make the ultimate Pokemon. It was a shining success. For the most part. I say that because after about two minutes of being self-aware, he kills all the scientists. It should be worth noting that this happens in the first five minutes of the movie.

4/3. Drowzee/Hypno

Alright, move past the fact that this freak looks like the pokemon version of someone found sitting on a park bench, eyeing little girls with bad intent. Actually, let’s not. This pokemon’s main power comes from its ability to put someone to sleep using ‘Hypnosis’, and then do damage using ‘Dream Eater’. As the name implies, dreams are eaten, and the user of this attack gets 50% of the given damage restored to its health. If you think that this sounds kinda Freddy Kruger-ish, hold on. Let’s have a look at several different entries to Drowzee’s pokedex:

- “It rarely eats the dreams of adults because children’s are much tastier.”
- “If you think that you had a good dream, but you can’t remember it a Drowzee has probably eaten it.”
- “If your nose becomes itchy while you are sleeping, it’s a sure sign that one of these Pokémon is standing above your pillow and trying to eat your dream through your nostrils.”

Gotta catch `em all! The children to kill, I mean…

Did you read that last one? You don’t need to worry about going out into the wild to try and catch one of these things, because it will fucking break into your house while you sleep and eat your dreams. That’s not a description. That’s a warning. If I designed this game, the entry would read “Kill on sight. This thing will break into your house, Goddamnit.”

Drowzee’s evolved form, Hypno, isn’t much of an improvement.

It’s skinnier, has some Shakespearean mane, and a pendulum. To top it off, “There once was an incident in which it took away a child it hypnotized”. I did not make that up, that’s the pokedex entry from FireRed version. This Pokemon steals children.

2/1. Paras/Parasect

As much as you might hate insects, Paras has a sort of adorable quality to it. The little mushrooms, shiny eyes, and un-intimidating pincers make it the sort of bug that appeals to people who don’t really like bugs; similar to Fall Out Boy makes music for people for people who don’t really like music.

Paras’s name was originally “Parasyte”, but was changed since that was the name of a messed up Japanese manga. The difference between the two is obvious: “Parasyte” involves alien parasites that bend people to their will, while Paras is a pokemon controlled by a fungus that controls its brain. According to the Pokedex, “The tochukaso [mushrooms] growing on this Pokémon’s back orders it to extract juice from tree trunks”.

Long story short, this pokemon is a zombie, or some variation of a pod person. The mushrooms are based off of Cordyceps, a type of parasitic fungi. If you’re thinking that this plant just wants to get nutrients really badly, then consider this: it can force ants to go to the tip of a plant leaf so that it can be eaten, and then spread its spores after being digested and turned into waste. Basically, the mushrooms could force Paras to get itself eaten just so that it could spread itself around after being turned into poo.

The evolved form Parasect is even less comforting:

Parasect’s growth has been stunted by the (now giant) mushroom, and it has become a gross exaggeration of its former self. Due to being possessed for so long, even the eyes have whited out. Parasect’s only control over mushroom is that it can release spores that either paralyzes, poison, or put enemies to sleep. It’s also forced to live in damp, dark places, as this is the type of environment that supports fungus and the mentally insane.

That is the life of Paras/Parasect: Only able to attack, and being the helpless victim of a pizza topping. Oh, and did I mention that these mushrooms are sprinkled on as soon as Paras is born? And I thought Cubone had a shitty life.

Tagged with: Pokemon

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This entry was posted on Saturday, April 18th, 2009 at 12:05 pm and is filed under Guest Articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.