>>40133911Every Gen has them. You can tell what they are by how often they appear in promotional artwork and if they have a lot of merchandise, particularly at Pokémon Center stores. The major recurring anime characters also tend to have them.
Pikachu and Meowth are common across all Generations, Jigglypuff varies depending on how in-season Smash is. First stage starters are always heavily promoted in their Gen, or they're all grouped together for things. Charizard and Mewtwo transcend Gen I at this point, but Mewtwo took until late Gen V to be consistently promoted again. If they're in Smash as playable characters, they're considered big Pokémon icons. Every Pikaclone counts (they started giving them to main characters starting in Gen IV). Baby Pokémon are popular, etc.
