Starter pokémon are a huge part of the Pokémon franchise and are a point of beloved nostalgia for a majority of fans. Everyone has both their favorite generation of starters as well as their specific picks for the best of each particular typing.
Most people love the base forms as they’re often adorable, and the final forms as they’re often cool, beautiful, or intimidating. The middle evolutions are often forgotten about or overlooked. Let’s look at and rank the 10 worst starter pokémon middle evolutions from every generation.
10 Wartortle
If we’re being real, Wartortle isn’t a bad middle evolution, it just happens to be the worst of the best. Some creature had to land at the entry spot on this list and unfortunately, Wartortle drew the short straw.
The oddest part of its design has to be the cloud-like ears and tail that don’t result in any part of Blastoise, its final evolution’s design. One can argue that Wartortle looks too similar to Squirtle and by removing those cloud-like elements you’re left with a darker colored Squirtle.
9 Grovyle
Grovyle isn’t necessarily unpleasant, but like most middle starter evolutions it just looks like an angsty teenager. Treecko isn’t exactly the cutest base form starter pokémon in existence and when it evolves the middle form isn’t doing it any favors. If Grovyle was the final evolution of its own line of pokémon than maybe it wouldn’t feel so bland, but unfortunately that’s not the case.
It does, however, fix the problem of Treecko being a brighter green than Sceptile and serves as a nice transition so the evolutionary line as a whole makes more sense.
8 Combusken
When you were once a tiny little chick and eventually grow into a Goldust-inspired professional wrestling pokémon you know you’ll be fighting an uphill battle for affection. The reality of the situation is that Combusken is simply an ugly and dumb-looking creature.
At times it looks like a Franken-pokémon that’s cobbled together parts from other creatures already existing in the world. Its face is comprised of oddly drooping eyes and a weird mouth appendage that looks more like a single human lip and less like any chicken-like beak to ever exist.
7 Servine
A question every kid asks themselves when they start to learn about animals growing up is what a snake would look like with legs or arms. It’s a funny thought experiment to have as it encourages imagination and often results in hilarious drawings.
Servine is that concept brought to life and boy is it weird. It has paper-thin legs and tiny leaves as arms which make it look uncomfortable standing up. If you took away the appendages it might be a pretty neat looking snake-inspired middle evolution leading up to Serperior.
6 Frogadier
In man ways Frogadier is an upgrade in design from the base pokémon in its line, that being Froakie. The problem for it, however, is that its final evolution has become a well-known and beloved pokémon due to its role in both the anime and the Detective Pikachu film.
It’s not necessarily a bad design, but Greninja just takes every aspect of the design and nails it. It happens to be an expert climber and can throw pebbles accurate from a hundred feet away so maybe think twice before making fun of one.
5 Thwackey
It may seem dumb to judge a pokémon purely on the coloring of its skin and/or fur, but that’s exactly what’s happening with Thwackey. This thing may have just been introduced in Pokémon Sword & Shield, but that doesn’t mean its safe from criticism.
Thwackey takes Grookey’s vibrant green fur and cranks up the neon which ends up giving Thwackey a yellow-ish green look that’s so far off from anything related to either its pre-evolution in Grookey or the massive final evolution it turns into in Rillaboom.
4 Brionne
By now it seems that the world at large has an irrational fear of clowns. They tend to come off as creepy and make people uncomfortable. That’s why when Popplio was introduced as the water-type starter in Pokémon Sun & Moon so many people were thrown off. It was a seal that happened to be mixed with a clown.
Thankfully the final evolution in Primarina registers as much like a mermaid as it does like a clown, but that’s not the case for Brionne. This middle evolution somehow looks nothing like a clown or a seal and just falls into a nebulous space.
3 Grotle
Did you manage to get the opportunity to watch the Detective Pikachu film starring Ryan Reynolds?
If you did then you would have been treated to a colossal appearance by Torterra, the grass-type starter pokémon that happens to be a turtle with a living biome on its back. Grotle, the middle evolution in Torterra’s line, unfortunately, is just an ugly duckling sitting between an adorable starter and a cool final evolution. Its armor plating on its back doesn’t read like a turtle shell either, but more of an armadillo-inspired design.
2 Quilladin
Quilladin is pretty cute and adorable if you as a trainer take a simple passing glance at it, but the moment you start to analyze its actual design you start to see the flaws pop up like flares in the night sky.
The most glaring issue is that the way the face and body are designed to interact with one another it makes it look like Quilladin is wearing a green jumpsuit or hoodie. This is a cause of the face being rounding off and coming across as something separate from its green body. It also doesn’t help that it evolves into one of the most divisive grass-type starter pokémon.
1 Charmeleon
It may seem like a bummer that Charmeleon tops the list of worst middle evolutions for starter pokémon, but there’s a legitimate reason for why this is. It happens to fall squarely between one of the most adorable and beloved starter pokémon ever in Charmander and is the roadblock trainers must level up before being rewarded with a Charizard.
It doesn’t help that Charmeleon is also a slightly redder tone of orange and exudes middle child energy to the fullest extent. At least it came in first place in something.
NEXT: Pokémon: The 10 Pokémon Most In Need Of A Mega Evolution
