There are a few Pokemon out there who were created by human hands. Most of them, like Mewtwo and Porygon, were created on purpose. But in this week’s Interesting Specimen post I’m going to talk about two Pokemon whose creation was a purely unintentional result of the human race’s environmental negligence. I speak of course of two of the fifth generation’s Poison-type Pokemon, Trubbish and its evolved form Garbodor.
According to one of the Pokedex entries, Trubbish are basically bags of garbage that were brought to life by toxic chemical waste. This means that Trubbish, and by extension Garbodor, are not naturally occurring life forms, but rather a random mutation caused by pollution. This little trait of course is what lands these two Pokemon in the Interesting Specimen category. Being creatures made of living trash; Trubbish and Garbodor have the ability to expel toxic gases. They also prefer living in filthy and polluted areas such as garbage dumps.
In the Games: Not having played Black and White, I can’t really say much about using Trubbish and Garbodor in the games. From what I’ve read though, both Pokemon can be found in the wild. That is fairly helpful if one isn’t patient enough to train and evolve a Trubbish. But to me, Trubbish and Garbodor seem like the fifth generation’s equivalent of Grimer and Muk.
Evolution: At level thirty-six, Trubbish evolves into Garbodor. The trash bag bursts open to become a living mound of garbage as tall as the average human. Being living mounds of garbage, Garbodor prefer to eat other pieces of garbage for food. One wonders if this means Garbodor also eat Trubbish and other Garbodor as well, though for some reason I doubt it. Anyway, this trash merely adds to the Garbodor’s body, and also apparently allows it to create new toxins in its body.
Mutants: One of the recurring themes of Pokemon is nature. And Trubbish and Garbodor seem to be the result of what happens when humans harm the environment, undesirable mutants that are created from and feed off human waste. This of course isn’t the first time such a concept has popped up in fiction (the movie CHUD comes to mind). Yet both the games and anime depict humans living quite nicely with Trubbish and Garbodor. It also occurs to me that these toxic creatures would come into conflict with certain Legendary Pokemon like Suicune, who’s know to purify polluted water. But then conflict is a part of nature, as it is a part of life. And I suppose Trubbish and Garbodor can be viewed either as nature’s way of adapting to human actions, or payback (probably payback).
That wraps it up for this week. I already have next week’s Interesting Specimen picked out, and it ties in with next week’s Legendary Pokemon of the Week post. That should be a big hint as to what next week’s Interesting Specimen is. Until next time.
