The Pikipek Family

It's Alola's early bird! The little woodpecker is cute, but seems like an odd choice for a tropical island setting, even if they do indeed exist in tropical islands. At least it will be thematic soon enough...even if it ends up making even less sense.

Trumbeak is already looking a little less like a woodpecker and more "exotic," but it's hard to pin down exactly what it might be evolving towards. Traditionally, the early game birds evolve into fearsome looking birds of prey, but as you saw above, the woodpecker finally breaks from tradition in a really odd way.

We went from a realistic looking woodpecker, to a realistic looking...toucan. Two birds that do share an evolutionary heritage, but otherwise have basically nothing in common, except the common thread of having large and specialized beaks, though that's...most birds? All birds?

Many are also put off by just how straightforward Toucannon appears. It's pretty much just a toucan, exactly a toucan, with no obvious design twist. I do appreciate its grumpy eyes, however, and its beak rather interestingly "lights up" or "charges" before firing off a special attack. Supposedly, that beak can generate enormous amounts of heat, giving Toucannon the unique "beak blast" move, which can even inflict a burn. It's entirely possible this is even a reference to the fact that a toucan uses its beak to thermoregulate, one of the more obscure bits if biological trivia we've seen in a pocket monster!

That's another cool thing about this generation - virtually every pokemon introduced in Sun and Moon has a unique and special ability, a signature move, or both!

For what it is, I do really like it.