>>39925050Phanpy wasn't available until Blackthorne and exclusive to Silver and Heart Gold, was rare on one optional route and had a chance to run away in Crystal, was placed in the Safari zone right before Hoenn's water routes, was postgame in Sinnoh and exclusive to swarms, could only be traded for in Unova at the end of the lost item sidequest if you're female, and was only in Kalos' friend safari while being missing completely from Gen 7.
The closest thing to a viable way to use it in a playthrough is Crystal(caught at low level so you're stuck with Phanpy's bad movepool until it evolves[even worse if you don't teach it Mud Slap from Falkner]) or in Pokemon XD(if RNGsus lets you find one before you complete the game waiting for another wild pokemon to appear at its poke spot). Even if you do find a Phanpy, they still haven't given it a ground move on level up, which is even worse than what Sandshrew got since it eventually got ground moves starting in Gen 3.
