>>50045529>>50045574The key is in the difference between ugly and unappealing. Plenty of cool and popular Pokemon are not pretty, take Gyarados for an example. Thing's hideous. But it's not any more hideous than you'd expect a sea serpent design to be, and it also has the fact that it's badass going for it.
Or on the less popular side of things, Stantler, and now Wyrdeer. Those two have some pretty unattractive faces, but not excessively so. They won't bee winning any beauty contests, but their faces don't detract from what is otherwise a solid design. You like the concept of psychic deer, Stantler and Wyrdeer will appeal just fine.
Where Crabominable fails is in being too ugly, to the point where there's not much left to like about it. The yeti-print claws are a neat concept, but then the rest of it is JUST the hideous face (way uglier than anything we got in the early gens if you ask me, except maybe something like Weezing, but even it didn't have those dumb buck teeth, repulsive hair, or weird eyes), and its stumpy body, and THAT'S IT. There's nothing there to like except the claws, unless you really have a thing for extreme ugliness, which most people don't. The idea of making a yeti crab Pokemon is cool, and looking at the real animal, I don't think anyone would have expected it to be beautiful, but it could have at least looked inoffensive. Great for those who love it, unremarkable to those who don't. But instead, it's a near-universal eyesore.
A troll Pokemon, to use your example, could fall into very much the same boat. A certain degree of ugliness would be expected, but if it was made SO ugly that there was nothing appealing about it apart from the fact that it's a troll Pokemon and we haven't had one of those before (at least not that I can recall off the top of my head), then it would be a failed design.
That's what Crabominable is, a good idea, a brilliant one, even, squandered by a design so unappealing that there's nothing left to like about it
