>>56741255Most recently they got completely blindsided by Rika's popularity.
Iono is the one you can tell is the one they were pushing for for Gen 9 and while I won't say Iono's a failure she's also not the super duper ultra mega hyper popularity type character. She's a hit, just not a massive one.
You could even argue that Geeta's I DON'T KNOW HOW TO HOLD BACK is yet another attempt of trying to bank on Cynthia's hard and strong popularity not realizing that the reason people think Cynthia is strong is because of her actual battle and not for lore reasons. Another thing they completely missed with Leon.
So, no, to this day, I don't think they have a single fucking idea of how to sell Pokewomen or how to make them popular from the get-go.
Honestly, I'd say only Lillie has been a success in this regard. As in, the character they wanted to shill and be popular ended up being as such. Everyone else that has been a massive hit has been an accident, someone they didn't expect, and this applies to males too.
