>>37266830Charizard's popularity also came from the TCG outside of Japan. It was one of two cards to have more than 100 HP and it did the most damage of ANY card in the base set (before weakness ofc). Since the TCG was so easy to get into (packs of cards were $3 each and the decks were $8-10) it was many kids introduction to Pokemon prior to them getting the games.
You could kind of make a similar argument for Greninja because he was absurd in the early XY era, but similar to the anime, the TCG is nowhere NEAR as big as it was in 99/00.
