>>37032615Whatever market research they did probably showed Rowlet and Popplio would be more popular than their final evolution. While baracat had the best chance at being popular. I'd also say there is a good chance he was designed to be the big popular one, he just looks like he was designed to be the ace of a team. Trying to do Greninja again could just lead to people saying this is a lamer Greninja, so they tried mixing it up.
Of course this time it didn't work out so great. Incineroar only has middling popularity despite the heavy pushing. He'll probably get a bit more popular with time, but he'll never be a Charizard or Greninja. Meanwhile Primarina gets a lot of love, they probably didn't feel that they could push the show with it though. Way too girly. It is possible they were chasing the YW bandwagon somewhere in there, I don't know enough about the series. This may have caused them to loose site of the best options as well.
I wouldn't be surprised if Gen 8 has a cute mon for the final evolution of a starter, and it gets shilled the most.
