>>36941683it's just not as satisfying to use pokemon with slow playstyles in the cart games. Also, there are tons of stellar grass types in the wild, so people who don't want to repeat types on their team have more grass options other than the starters.
venusaur and meganium suffered from designs that were neither cute nor badass. giga drain used to have low attack power, sludge bomb didn't become special until gen 4, and what used to be the strongest grass type move, solarbeam, takes two turns.
Sceptile was kinda popular too but its signature move used to have lower attack power and it had very limited coverage moves.
Torterra got a badass design. However, it's too slow to sweep and too fast for trick room. Its 4x weakness severely hinders its use as tank a tank. (Swampert has a 4x weakness too but that was its only weakness). Also ash used torterra in the anime and had a pretty low winrate with torterra.
Gen 5 had pretty lackluster starter mons. Because their HA only got released in gen 6, so Serperior used to be just the faster pledger in doubles(thanks to its bulk and speed) or a coil+leaf blade setup. emboar and samurott both got HAs that aren't as useful as Serperior's, so it got really popular. despite its design being neither cute nor badass.
Chesnaught suffers the same as torterra. its singles sets also have slow playstyles.
Decidueye lost its cuteness as it evolves, but its design is so uncanny it missed being badass. it was too frail to set up or stall, too weak to be a tank, too slow to be a sweeper, too fast for trick room. Whereas Incineroar had great utility and Primarina's good spdef and sp atk made it a good special tank or slow pledger in doubles format games.
