I don’t want to review these Pokémon.  I really don’t.  Sadly, they’re sitting there in the Pokédex, right after Timburr, Gurdurr and Conkeldurr, and I don’t exactly have much of an excuse not to.  So… with as little ado as possible, let’s get started on the vibration Pokémon, Tympole, Palpitoad and Seismitoad.

Understand that I do not think these are terrible Pokémon.  They are not… badly designed, as such.  I think Tympole and, yes, even Palpitoad are kind of cute.  Seismitoad may be ungainly, but as he’s a toad Pokémon I think that’s intentional.  No, the crux of my problem is that they are just rather dull.  They’re not even interesting enough for me to hate properly, which makes this business of writing a blog post about them rather a trial.  Nonetheless, I shall persevere.  Tympole, Palpitoad and Seismitoad are tadpole and frog Pokémon, obviously.  “Tadpole and frog Pokémon,” unfortunately, is an idea that was already done way back in Red and Blue by Poliwag, Poliwhirl and Poliwrath (Poliwhirl, incidentally, is the favourite Pokémon of Satoshi Tajiri, the creator of the franchise, which is something of a difficult legacy to live up to when you think about it).  The Pokédex continues to classify Poliwhirl and Poliwrath as “tadpole Pokémon,” but let’s face it, they’re clearly fully-grown and looking more like frogs than tadpoles, and there’s really no question about Politoed, the alternate final evolution for Poliwhirl added in Gold and Silver.  I suppose you could make the argument that Palpitoad and Seismitoad are toad Pokémon, not frog Pokémon, what with the bumps that are meant to represent a toad’s “warts,” but since the only thing that really makes a toad a toad and not a frog is that they can live happily out of water, and Seismitoad is still a Water-type, I think that’s splitting hairs a bit (yes, all right, he’s a Water/Ground dual-type; big deal).  Continue reading “Tympole, Palpitoad and Seismitoad” →