As you know, at 3DSourced we’re enormous Pokemon nerds. We spent days putting together our 50+ favorite 3D printable Pokemon files a few months back, and I’ve personally 3D printed dozens of Pokemon models in my time.
I was curious to know which Pokemon are REALLY the most popular of all time. So, to find this out, I used Thingiverse, the world’s largest database for fan-made 3D STL files, Thingiverse, and took the 100 most popular 3D printable Pokemon models.
I analyzed their total number of likes, what generation the Pokemon first appeared in, and what Pokemon family they are from (for example, Charizard is labeled as coming from the Charmander family in our data).
The results were really surprising!
In this data study, I identified:
- The most popular Pokemon based on total number of Thingiverse 3D model likes, and number of occurrences in the top 100 pokemon models
- The most popular Pokemon generation (do you Genwunners win out?!)
- The most popular Pokemon families
Note: for files with over 1000 likes, Thingiverse defaults to just showing “7K” rather than the specific number. So, some files with below 1000 likes are rounded to the nearest thousand.
The Most Popular Pokemon Is…
Surprisingly, the world’s most popular Pokemon based on this Thingiverse data is… Cubone!
4 of the top 100 most liked 3D files were Cubone models, mostly Cubone skulls. These models had over 28,000 combined likes on Thingiverse, making it the most liked Pokemon.
The top 10 most liked Pokemon were:
- Cubone: 28,000 likes
- Pikachu: 22,020 likes
- Bulbasaur: 13,349 likes
- Squirtle: 13,000 likes
- Gengar: 11,766 likes
- Charizard: 9,765 likes
- Charmander: 9,263 likes
- Vulpix: 9,000 likes
- Dragonite: 9,000 likes
- Eevee: 8,692 likes
The Most Popular Pokemon Families
Even when the entire evolution family was included (so, Charmander, Charmeleon, and Charizard would all count under the same “Charmander” family), Cubone was STILL the most popular Pokemon from our data.
The top 10 families, whereby all the evolutions in the same family were included, were:
- Cubone: 28,000 likes
- Pikachu: 22,020 likes
- Charmander: 19,028 likes
- Eevee (includes all Eeveelutions): 16,341 likes
- Bulbasaur: 14,349 likes
- Vulpix: 14,000 likes
- Gastly: 13,766 likes
- Squirtle: 13,000 likes
- Dratini: 9,000 likes
- Togepi: 5,000 likes
Eeveelutions DOMINATE The Most Popular Models In The Top 100
While Cubone was the most liked Pokemon overall, Eevee was the most popular by number of occurrences in the top 100 most popular 3D models list, with 10.
10% of all the most liked models in the top 100 were either Eevee, or an Eevelution such as Jolteon or Vaporeon.
Pikachu was both the second most popular model by the number of likes, as well as number of models in the top 100 most popular, with 8 appearances.
The top 10 most frequently appearing Pokemon families were:
- Eevee: 10 times
- Pikachu: 8 times
- Gastly: 6 times
- Bulbasaur: 6 times
- Charmander: 5 times
- Cubone: 4 times
- Squirtle: 4 times
- Mew: 3 times
- Vulpix: 3 times
- Growlithe and 9 other Pokemon: 2 times
The most liked individual model was a Cubone skull keychain, which had 17,000 likes!
Cubone was also the only Pokemon with two of the top 10 most popular 3D models, at both 1st and 10th position.
All 3 of the Gen 1 starters had a Pokemon model in the top 10 most popular, with Charmander in 3rd place, Bulbasaur in 5th place, and Squirtle in 6th place.
Generation 1 is BY FAR the Most Popular
It should come as no surprise that Generation 1 was the most popular Pokemon Generation.
An incredible 82% of the most popular Pokemon were from the original 151 that were released with the first generation of Pokemon games.
Remarkably, zero Pokemon from Generation 4, 5, or 6 made it into the top 100. Not even fan favorites like Lucario or Chandelure, who even made it into the popular Super Smash Bros and Pokken games because they were so popular among fans.
The full breakdown by Generation is:
- Generation 1: 82 Pokemon
- Generation 2: 11 Pokemon
- Generation 3: 4 Pokemon
- Generation 7: 3 Pokemon
- Generation 4, 5, 6, 8: 0 Pokemon
And the full breakdown by the total number of likes is:
- Generation 1: 187,963 likes
- Generation 2: 14,395 likes
- Generation 3: 7,884 likes
- Generation 7: 2,221 likes
From Generation 7, Zeraora, Litten and Rowlet made it into the top 100.
From Generation 3, two models of Groudon made the top 100, as did one model of Castform, and one of Mudkip.
From Generation 2, two models of Tyranitar, Mareep and Togepi made the top 100, as did models of Teddiursa, Hoothoot, Chikorita, Entei, and Totodile.
If you’re interested in the full dataset which has links to all the 100 free-to-download 3D printable models, you can find it here.
And for our selection of Pokemon and other great models, we have our frequently updated list of the coolest 3D models you can 3D print.
