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Look, with Red and Green, they decided to use the final evos of the Starters as the cover art. While there could be a debate on why the two that were chosen were first, Blue came out soon after and then Yellow thanks to the anime. By that time, Japan has all 3 starters + Pikachu on the cover art, so everyone was getting equal doses of popularity. What a bunch of anons on this site fail to realize, however, is that during the time of Gen 1 and 2, Game Freak, and eventually the Pokemon Company, were only focused on what the responses of the Japanese audiences were. This has been explicitly stated by them on several occasions, as no one at the time thought that Pokemon would get that big. The reason Charizard got so popular over the other final starters is because the Japanese audience preferred it over the other two, and they even preferred the Bulbasaur and Squirtle over Venusaur and Blastoise, resulting in Charizard getting more anime screen time and merch than the other two. By the time it got shipped globally, it was already like this and therefore we were only exposed to the Charizard popularity peak without much of the buildup that was in Japan. Since then, he's continued to be the most popular which is why Charizard's shilled today.
