Who Should Have Been Pokemon Pink's Mascot?

Fans are debating over who should have been the mascot Pokemon for the scrapped Pokemon Pink game. Earlier this week, ComicBook.com reported on the discovery of mentions of a "Pokemon Pink" game in the source code for Pokemon Yellow. If legitimate, this code seems to indicate that the Pokemon Company had plans to release a partner game to Pokemon Yellow, likely featuring a different Pokemon partner than Pikachu. Of course, this raises the question - who would have been the player's partner Pokemon, who likely would have followed the player around similar to Pikachu's role in Pokemon Yellow?

In this week's episode of A Wild Podcast Has Appeared, ComicBook.com's weekly Pokemon podcast, hosts Jim Viscardi, Megan Peters, and Christian Hoffer debated over which Pokemon would have gotten the nod as Pokemon Pink's mascot. The crew seemed to agree that the decision would have come down to one of two Pokemon - Clefairy or Jigglypuff. At one point, Clefairy was going to be the main mascot of the Pokemon franchise before it was swapped out for Pikachu late in the process. This is reflected by Clefairy's prominent role in the first Pokemon manga, although Clefairy hasn't gotten much love from the Pokemon franchise since.

Meanwhile, Jigglypuff largely made its name because of the Pokemon anime, which used Jigglypuff as a running gag character. With an iconic "cry" and its appearance in games like Super Smash Bros., it seems to make sense that Jigglypuff would have gotten the final push for appearing in Pokemon Pink.

Viscardi also suggested a third option - Chansey, due to that Pokemon's prominent role as a healer in the anime series. While Viscardi had a positive opinion on Chansey, Hoffer disagreed with him profusely, resulting in an animated argument (which can be viewed up in the video.) While Viscardi didn't mention it in the video, he did have one thing going for him - Chansey does have a unique overworld sprite in Pokemon Yellow, as do Jigglypuff and Clefairy. That would seem to suggest that Chansey had just as much of a chance as Jigglypuff or Clefairy did of getting named Pokemon Pink's featured Pokemon.

Other Pink "Gen 1" Pokemon that could have been the mascot include Slowpoke, Exeggcute, Lickitung, and Mr. Mime. Of course, several of those options seem farfetched at best - could you really see Nintendo selling millions of Pokemon Pink games with Lickitung's massive tongue on its box art?

So - what Pokemon do you think would have been Pokemon Pink's mascot Pokemon? Let us know in the comment section or find the hosts of A Wild Podcast Has Appeared on Twitter to share your thoughts!