Complaining about Gen 1/Kanto references is like complaining about SMB 1 references in Mario. Its the game with the biggest cultural footprint in the franchise. It will always be the first entry so when people look up the games history or a numerical list of Pokemon, they'll always be what they see first. Even if GameFreak never pandered to Kanto, it'd still be visible in some capacity because everyone knows stuff like Pidgey and Lavender town simply through internet memes.
Besides, considering it's had two remakes(and featured in another gen's remake) along with Kanto Pokemon being available in the main campaign of most generations, its not like its only visible to kids who grew up with RBY. The original anime seasons are still streaming online. I picked up my nephew from his after school program last week and they gave them coloring pages--they were the same type of pages from 22 years ago with Misty, Brock,and Ash because even when you google "Pokemon coloring book" that still the first results.
