So much to respond to already but... that would get ridiculous, so I'll just tackle the first post for now. I'll agree with the basic notion: some Pokémon just seemed to get spammed. To some degree it is a necessary if unpleasant thing; even random impulse buys (which I thought drove most retail sales, as opposed to playing or collecting) are aided by focusing on
popular Pokémon. There is a push for a certain amount of cards each set so if the designers insist on "new filler" (instead of say a nice reprint or alternate art of something) then it is likely easier and faster working with certain Pokémon because they lend themselves to "safer" card design. With over 700 Pokémon to represent. though, I'd say we are at least near (if not already arrived) at the point where it needs to be "one and done" until the entire Pokédex has been represented.
There was something that was factually wrong in the first post, though:
Another Pokémon - or rather group of Pokémon -that I find mildly annoying whenever I see a card of them appearing somewhere are the legendary birds and their master, Lugia. They are among my favourite Pokémon of all time (Lugia is my favourite Pokémon), so I'm always sad when I see that the cards just suck.
There hasn't been a single good, or even decent, Articuno, Zapdos (especially Zapdos), Moltres or Lugia card. They all had some kind of drawback that made them nearly unplayable. Either they were too weak, needed too much Energy to even function or had only one deck you could even hope to use them in and then they still weren't usable. If I could make a wish, it would be for a decent batch of legendary bird cards and a decent Lugia...
Well, Bandit Rings Lugia-EX looks pretty good, so part of my wish is already granted, but my point still stands.
No, your point doesn't stand.
It can be a real pain, but when discussing a TCG you need to go
all the way back. Information from even a few years ago can be sketchy: most of us don't blog specifically about our experiences with cards, and even if we did that doesn't help much unless we are good writers, good at analysis
and our experiences span basically the entire card pool.
So... the original Legendary Bird Trio plus their "boss" have had competitive cards that have played major roles in the game. It was already pointed out that you don't even have to go back far for
Lugia-EX [Plasma]; while I don't recall it being the undisputed master of the metagame (I don't care for "one deck to rule them all" anyway) it had a competitive deck that I believe was prominent at least
twice. I can do into details if you need them. What about everything else?
Flashback to the early days of the TCG and you'll find a deck known as "Raindance", which our modern
Blastoise improves upon, and you'll see
Articuno (
Fossil) as one of the main attackers. The original
Rocket's Zapdos was a strong card that had its own competitive deck, aided for a time by the initial version of
Metal Energy, a Special Energy card that they later reworded in subsequent releases to errata the first try. When the original Pokémon-ex mechanic was being used (it is nearly the same as the modern Pokémon-EX mechanic, but I've inquired and officially the two are considered as two separate things), we received
Articuno-ex,
Moltres-ex and
Zapdos-ex in
EX: FireRed & LeafGreen that each had a Poké-Power (a precursor to Abilities) known as "Legendary Ascent". They all starred in a deck, combining Type-matching and constantly bouncing their Energy around by spamming Legendary Ascent and if I remember correctly after all this time,
EXP.ALL and
Super Scoop Up. to make it hard to take a Prize again the deck.
Yeah, after this all those years start to blur together... but the TCG has been around for over 15 years and it is just easier to remember certain powerhouses over others.
