LOST POKEMON:
RINRIN and BERUNRUN

CONTENT UNCOVERED BY THE CUTTING ROOM FLOOR

Original sugimori style artwork by Rachel Briggs!

I wonder why they decided to scrap this one? A dark type black cat would have been a surefire hit with a lot of players. Perhaps they felt that their final design for Sneasel and Umbreon were collectively too similar, even if neither of those are cats. It certainly would have been a lot of black-furred, pointy-eared, round-faced, dark-type mammals in one generation. Still, this is a really cute little kitten, all decked out with bells that presumably grow directly off its body, and would have been a nice alternative to the Meowth line. It took SO LONG for them to actually make any dark type domestic cats, with Alolan Meowth and Persian all the way in Gen 7!

Berunrun is even better, streamlining this family down to a much simpler, more elegant feline without losing kitten-like proportions. Again, would have almost definitely had a ton of die-hard fans, and looks a whole lot better to me than Persian ever did. We have so many cat based pokemon now, but none of them, once fully evolved, look quite so perfectly like an actual cat as Berunrun here.