Every Kanto run opens the same way: Brock in Pewter City with a level 12 Geodude and a level 14 Onix, both Rock and Ground, then Misty in Cerulean City with a Water-type gym. This is where a lot of childhoods were decided.

Grass hits Rock and Ground for four times damage and hits Water for double. Bulbasaur walks through both gyms like it has a key. Squirtle cleans up Brock, then has to slap water at a water gym. Charmander shows up to a rock fight with fire, which does half damage, then shows up to a water gym with fire, which also does half damage.

Add up all six stats and Charizard comes out at 534, Blastoise at 530 and Venusaur at 525. Nine points separate first from last, which in a fan argument is a blowout and in actual math is nothing.

Charizard gets there with offense: 109 Special Attack and 100 Speed. It is built to hit first and hit hard.

Toughness is HP plus Defense plus Special Defense. Blastoise has 100 Defense and 105 Special Defense, which adds up to 284. Venusaur is at 263. Charizard is at 241, last by a mile.

This is the turtle with two water cannons coming out of its shell. It was never supposed to lose a round about not falling over.

Charizard has base 100 Speed. Venusaur has 80. Blastoise has 78. In a game where whoever moves first often wins, that gap matters more than the four-point lead in round two.

The funny part: Charizard has wings and could not learn Fly in the original Red and Blue. That only changed in Pokémon Yellow, even though the official artwork already had people riding it.

Blastoise is weak to two types: Electric and Grass. Charizard is weak to three, and one of them is Rock at four times damage, so a single rock thrown at the right moment ends the conversation. Venusaur is weak to four: Fire, Ice, Flying and Psychic.

Being a plain Water type is not exciting. It is very hard to punish.

All three got a Mega Evolution. Mega Venusaur jumps to a 625 total and Mega Blastoise to 630, with its two shoulder cannons merged into one big cannon. Bulbapedia notes that the Gigantamax version later went the other way and has 31 cannons.

Charizard got two Megas. Mega Charizard X turns black, breathes blue fire and becomes a Dragon type. Mega Charizard Y keeps the Flying type and pushes Special Attack to 159. Both sit at 634. The other two got one each.

In Red, Blue, FireRed and LeafGreen your rival always picks the starter that beats yours. Bulbapedia spells it out: his choice is the type that weakens the type you picked. Years later, at the Indigo Plateau, that same starter is his last Pokémon, at level 65.

So the Bulbasaur kid ends the game staring down a Charizard. The Charmander kid gets a Blastoise. The Squirtle kid gets a Venusaur, which has the lowest stat total of the three. You lose to the type chart no matter what. Squirtle at least gets the easiest version.

In 2020 Pokémon ran a worldwide fan poll called Pokémon of the Year. It drew 6,608,215 votes across every species. In the Kanto ranking, Charizard finished first with 93,968 votes. Bulbasaur was third. Squirtle was 13th, Blastoise 14th.

Venusaur finished 28th with 10,454 votes. That is behind Muk, which is a pile of sludge, and behind Ditto, which is a pink blob that turns into other Pokémon. Fans love baby Bulbasaur and do not vote for the dad.

Count every member of each family that made the Kanto top 30 and the Charmander line has 108,017 votes, the Bulbasaur line 66,469 and the Squirtle line 35,271.