With the fifth generation of Pokémon monsters introduced (in North America) earlier this month, the bestiary is up to nearly 650. That's a lot of Pokémon, and it figures not every one of them is recognized as much as, say, Charmander, Snivy, Pikachu and, yes, Mudkip.
A series of five surveys, four with extremely large sample sizes - more than one million have taken the Generation I recognition quiz on Sporcle, have effectively pegged the least recognizable Pokémon. Generation V has been taken 1,976 times, the least of all five. But according to the results, these are the five most-forgotten Pokémon across all five generations, in descending order:
Generation I: Marowak, 36.7 percent; Kingler, 35.4 percent; Lickitung, 33.7 percent; Exeggcute, 31.4 percent; Exeggutor, 31.1 percent.
Generation II: Slugma, 37.1 percent; Shuckle, 35.9 percent; Magcargo, 34.3 percent; Qwilfish, 34 percent; Corsola, 33.9 percent.
Generation III: Chimecho, 41.3 percent; Crawdaunt, 41.1 percent; Corphish, 41.1 percent; Whiscash;, 39.2 percent; Barboach, 38.8 percent.
Generation IV: Finneon, 38.1 percent; Lumineon, 37.9 percent; Chingling, 37.4 percent; Chatot, 37.1 percent; Mantyke, 36 percent.
Generation V: Accelgor, 20.6 percent; Stunfisk, 20.5 percent; Elgyem, 17.7 percent; Amoonguss, 16.6 percent; Beheeyem, 15.6 percent.
Accounting for Generation V's low scores being because the game is so new in the West, it's still pretty good when your least recognizable characters are still recognized by 300,000 out of a million people.
It's also a little funny that Exeggutor is the least recognized out of the oldest generation. Tsunekazu Ishihara, president and CEO of The Pokémon Company, said in 2000 that Exeggutor was his favorite. "That's because I was always using this character while I was debugging the program."