For more than 25 years, the Pokémon franchise has had a significant influence on popular culture. During that time, the series also generated a fair share of controversy. Some of them have been wholly justified, while others are just plain bizarre.
Although some of these shiny Pokémon have undergone significant changes over the generations, shiny Pokémons are rare variants. Even though they are rare, they are still incredibly unique because sometimes they differ significantly from their own original form.
There were still a few lost Pokémons, though, whose designs had been altered after development. In this case, three Pokémon designs had been changed because of racial controversy or potential controversy.
Let us discuss those three racist Pokémon that have the potential to endanger even the most successful Marvel franchise.
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Why Did Pokémon Modify the Jynx’s Design?
The Pokémon, a Japanese media franchise has featured a number of traditional monsters ever since it debuted in the 1990s. Since its inception in the 1990s, the Pokémon video game series has included a number of conventional monsters. These include well-known creatures like Pikachu, Mewtwo, Charizard, Jigglypuff, and Charizard.
Jynx is a Pokémon that has a particularly one of the most contentious pasts. Jynx, a rather peculiar-appearing Generation 1 monster, stood out for having a humanoid and possibly racist appearance. As a result, her appearance was drastically altered, making her an infamous entry in the Pokédex.
Jynx appeared strangely humanoid, in contrast to the majority of other Pokémon, which were obviously more animalistic in nature and design. Her skin tone was the most obvious aspect of this design, though.
As a result, the most notable article criticizing Jynx, though it was not the first, was written by Carole Boston Weatherford, a culture critic for Black World Today. It was only a few weeks after Jynx made her American anime debut in the Christmas episode, Holiday Hi-Jynx that her article, which was released on January 5, 2000, was published.
Weatherford informed her readers that despite Pokémon’s “bad animation and a mindless plot,” her 10- and 12-year-old children find it “incredibly fun and addictive.” An excerpt followed:
“…I saw a character on the Pokémon TV cartoon that not only stripped the phenomenon of its innocence but stopped me cold. The character Jynx, Pokémon #124, has decidedly human features: jet-black skin, huge pink lips, gaping eyes, a straight blonde mane and a full figure, complete with cleavage and wiggly hips. Put another way, Jynx resembles an overweight drag queen incarnation of Little Black Sambo, a racist stereotype from a children’s book long ago purged from libraries.”
Because of such controversies, Jynx’s color was later changed from black skin to purple in order to lessen the obvious allusions to blackface.
Evolution Of The Smoochum Pokémon Design
It is also important to note that Smoochum’s original design in the 1997 demo of Pokémon the Series: Gold and Silver had black skin. However, two years after the series was released, the games included a new Smoochum: a purple one.
It was impossible to know exactly what the makers were thinking because they never released a formal statement outlining their justification. It can be possible that Smoochum’s change from black to purple had something to do with the Jynx saga.
Since Game Freak probably started getting complaints about Jynx as early as 1996, it is likely that they changed the designs of Smoochum to prevent further controversy.
What Happened With Bellossom’s Design?
It appeared that the same decision was made for Bellossom’s design to head off the next potential racial controversy as the creators did with Smoochum’s redesign. However, because it was not directly related to Jynx, they discovered the issue much later in the development process. Bellossom had dark skin at first in Pokémon the Series: Gold and Silver‘s demo in 1997.
Even the official Gen 2 artwork for Bellossom depicted her with dark skin. Bellossom’s, however, was more likely to offend people because of its more humanoid appearance.
Surprisingly, Bellossom’s Gen 2 Shiny sprite resembled her dark-skinned artwork quite a bit.
The origin of Jynx’s design or the precise explanation for the redesign of Jynx, Bellossom, and Smoochum’s colors was never revealed in any official statement. Eventually, for whatever reason, the colors of all three Pokémon were changed to ones that seemed to be something not more controversial.
Source- CBR
