>>56169422I think fundamentally the issue the elemental monkeys have is that they are stone evolutions. Because of this, their movepools post evolution back in Black and White were atrocious so you often ended up with them as dead weight in your party by Castelia City when you could most easily evolve them, with the only one of them that was especially feasible being the fire one (who I think most would agree has the weakest design when evolved of the three) who immediately drops off on the next route.
These factors I imagine really poisoned the overall perceptions people had of them but they're ultimately innocuous and clearly Japan likes them given they keep popping up in media, so it is what it is.
