Pokemon of the Minute: Hippowdon

Sorry for the little hiatus I took, folks. I'm back and ready for some serious study!

And what better way to get back into things than gushing over a great Poke? This minute: Hippowdon!

My relationship with this particular Poke has, regrettably, been a turbulent one. When I first encountered it at the start of Generation IV, I didn't quite know what to think of it. There I was, facing down a ground type that looked like a hippopotamus, and had an eruption of sand coming out of it. A hippo? And a ground type hippo? What a ridiculous idea! So, I wrote off Hippowdon as a miss and moved on.

Then two things happened. The first, I watched a special on Animal Planet on hippos. Did you know they can bite a crocodile in half? Just bite right through without a second thought. Needless to say, there were lots of these little bits of information and I became fascinated by these lumbering water dwellers. The second thing that happened was that I faced a Hippowdon in a battle. I was amazed by the staggering array of moves it could learn, from fire/ice/thunder fang to Sunny Day and back again. Also, unlike many others within it's type, it has the ability to become both a sweeper and a wall through the use of varying move sets.

So, Hippowdon is Pokemon of the minute because it won me over. Unlike other Pokes that I find and simply fall in love with immediately, this one was the victim of unfair scorn and had to work extra hard because of it. But now that that nonsense is all in the past, I'm free to admire this creature for what it is: a tough-as-nails beast truly worthy of the powerful creature on which it is based. Fear it in battle, trainers. Don't make the same mistake I did.

-The Professor