Orbeetle is undoubtedly one of the interesting Bug Pokémon with its vivid colors, hypnotic eyes, and airborne stance. With this Bug/Psychic type making its debut in Pokémon GO, you must be curious about its design origins, and believe me, it’s all worth it, as this is one of the most well-designed critters out there.
Blipbug
So let’s delve into the lore and design details of the Orbeetle line, starting obviously with the base stage, Blipbug.
Right off the bat, ‘Blip’bug is a reference to the sound a radar makes when it picks up something. Spoiler alert, the Orbeetle line has a lot to do with radar.
Dottler
Dottler, well, has a lot of dots on it, but its name is also a wordplay on the Doppler effect, which is a change in the frequency or pitch of a sound-emanating object, moving towards or away from the source (a radar, for instance).
Physics aside, it is obvious that Blipbug is also a caterpillar, and Orbeetle, quite evidently, is a ladybird.
You must be wondering why on earth a caterpillar-like creature turns into a ladybird, and guess what? That’s exactly what happens in nature!
Ladybirds actually have a larva (and then a pupa) stage, before becoming their pretty selves.
Anyway, back to radars again. Dottler’s body looks like a radome, a protective enclosure over a radar system.
Orbeetle
Orbeetle also carries this shape forward, and then so much more!
Firstly, Orbeetle is clearly a beetle (a ladybird, duh), and it’s also an orb, magical spheres used in psychic rituals. There you go, there’s the Psychic typing.
Anyway, Orbeetle also sounds like ‘orbital,’ referencing objects that orbit around the earth, like satellites. Again, satellites also use radar technology.
So yeah, this whole line is very much associated with radar, which mainly attributes to its Psychic typing. In fact, Orbeetle’s Pokédex entry reads:
“It emits psychic energy to observe and study what’s around it—and what’s around it can include things over six miles away.”
Current radar technology can sense things up to 170 miles away, so six miles seems very underwhelming. This indicates that Orbeetle’s tech is kinda old radar. Some World War 2 radars had ranges from seven miles to as much as 100 miles. But more specifically, weather radars tend to have six mile ranges, with the same range in military applications associated with older systems.
Pretty cool, right?
Now, Orbeetle is a Galarian Pokémon, so it has to do something with the United Kingdom! Well, even though the radar was invented by a German and an Italian, it was initially used to detect large metal objects.
Then, a British engineer named Robert Wattson-Watt started extensively working on radars as a meteorologist and went on to invent the first weather radar. Later, he went on to pioneer radar technology.
So, we have established the connection between the radar technology gimmick of the Orbeetle line and the UK, but what is the connection with the ladybird? After all, ladybirds are found everywhere except the Tundra and New Zealand.
Well, the most common type of ladybird in Europe is the Seven-Spot Ladybird, which is apt, as Orbeetle also has seven spots!
Now, let’s leave Europe and go to Japan, as this place has a popular toy called ‘radar bug,’ which looks like this:
These toys were extremely popular in the 50s and 60s, and it is also a seven-spot ladybird. You basically wind it up and leave it on the ground, where it moves around and can sense before it bumps into things, and turns. While there’s technically no radar in this, it was a marketing gimmick since everyone was fascinated by radar, a very hyped technology at that time.
Speaking of fascination, you have to admit that Orbeetle is shaped rather weirdly. Like, it doesn’t look like a traditional ladybird. It, in fact, looks like a technology freak super villain! A mad scientist, even. Someone who works on mind control technology.
Look at it… Orbeetle has those wild eyes, that flimsy body, and something like a moustache to go with the vibe.
If you look closely, the ladybird body is actually its head, which houses its massive brain. And we all know how much of a popular troupe big-brain super villains are!
Gigantmax Orbeetle
Now, let’s move on to Gigantamax Orbeetle.
No prizes for guessing, this thing is a UFO. Fun fact, NASA once took ladybirds into space, and they saw that these little bugs did pretty good for themselves in zero gravity! Check out this article.
How cool is that?!
What’s equally cool is when you realize that Orbeetle’s mind control shenanigans have not entirely to do with traditional ladybirds. See those cyan-colored groovy eyes and the thin body? That’s more like the Dinocampus coccinellae, a wasp parasite of beetles like the ladybird.
This wasp makes ladybirds into a zombie basically, controlling the poor ladybird’s mind to do its bidding, and that’s standing guard over the wasp’s eggs. In other words, the wasp turns a ladybird into a zombie babysitter, and only around 25% recover from this mind control, which is caused by a virus from the wasp.
The wasp larvae feast on the ladybug’s internal organs, and that’s why they don’t survive, even if they recover from the mind control. Yikes! Nature’s brutal, eh? This wasp is a legit super villain.
That’s not all! While the ladybird is found widely all around the world, the ladybird killer wasp is only found in… drumroll… the British Isles (Galar)!
Phew, this lore went from cool to scary pretty quickly. Brilliant!
There you have it, dear reader. If you’re interested in reading more lore and design articles of some popular Pokémon, then don’t forget to check these out!
Dragapult | Kommo-o | Darkrai | Cresselia | Applin | Mega Salamence | Dialga & Palkia Origin | Giratina | Rillaboom, Cinderace & Inteleon | Garchomp | Baxcalibur | Hydreigon | Skeledirge | Annihilape | Zygarde | Tinkaton | Gardevoir | Druddigon | Hisuian Zoroark | Naganadel | Drampa | Enamorus | Wooloo & Dubwool | Hatterene | Morpeko | Aegislash | Hydrapple | Grimmsnarl
Happy reading, trainers!
