Alolan Grimer and Muk

Finally, at least one of my own personal favorite pokemon receives one of these shiny new regional variants...and the final results are a total improvement! This is the third and last Alolan form in Sun and Moon to acquire the coveted dark typing, and dark/poison grimer also features a pair of rock-like "teeth" to give it a noxious, toxic bite! The lone yellow stripe is a bit strange, but makes sense once we evolve into...

Alolan Muk! All the goopy fun of regular Muk, but in an ever-shifting rainbow of dreary colors - like an oily heap of melting plastic - encrusted with a collection of jagged, crystalline shards.

So what, exactly, is supposed to be going on here? According to the 'dex, Grimer and Muk were deliberately imported to Alola in order to consume and reduce human waste, and adapted themselves from feeding primarily on sludge to feeding primarily on solid garbage - including poor little Trubbish, whose numbers have "decreased dramatically" ever since! Oh no!!!

Unfortunately, trash-Muk come with their own set of problems, as their bodies condense toxic substances into those crystals they utilize as teeth and claws, and they've got a nasty tendency to shed these poisonous, virtually indestructible stones into the environment. This is just the sort of thing I love to hear about in Pokemon; the many ways the natural world and human civilization alike may interact with all these improbable monsters.

It's a Muk that can bite people. What's better in life?