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Let's use Gamefreak's golden boy as a measuring stick for what makes a Pokemon popular.
>early promotion
Lucario is one of the anointed ones that got an entire movie before it's generational debut, on top of other pre-release shilling like being the final rank in PMD and showing up in other early teaser stuff for gen 4, alongside Bonsly, Mime Jr, Munchlax and Weavile, though Lucario easily dwarfs all of them. A popular Pokemon gets a headstart on other mons for occupying the headspace of kids by being the first thing they see and latch onto, this is also why starters are universally popular no matter what.
>powerful/unique abilities
Kinda self explanitory, Lucario got to be Fighting/Steel despite it making way more sense for him to be Fighting/Psychic for literally no other reason than it's a unique type that makes him stand out, he also had amazing mixed attacker stats, a signature move in Aura Sphere with the coveted special Fighting type attack that isn't Focus Miss, and other goodies like E-Speed. This became a running theme among other shillmons to have minmaxed stats, a broken ability, an insane signature move, or all 3.
>alternate forms
This one's self explanatory, but to me it feels they give alt forms to mons that are already popular as a way to keep them relevant. This is mostly in reference to Mega Evolution since Regionals don't affect a Pokemon's popularity to a terrible degree and more often than not are kind of just set dressing, since most regionals wind up being mostly the same as their original form powerlevel wise, barring obvious exceptions like G-Darm.
>getting focus in spinoff titles
Another easy box to check, along with PMD, Lucario also stole his way into Smash Bros Brawl, getting in remarkably early compared to other fighters with only about a year between DP's release (Sept 2006) and Brawl's (Jan 2008) and Brawl had a delay on top of that.
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