Tinkaton is one of the most flamboyant and quirky Pokémon in the franchise. Who doesn’t love pink little gremlins, eh?!
To no one’s surprise, Tinkaton has diverse lore backing it up, ranging from obscure Iberian folklore creatures to the Industrial Revolution union in the US and Spain… there’s so much brewing!
When you check out Tinkatuff and Tinkaton, you can see that this evolution line is obviously based on Poppy from League of Legends.
There are more iconic female characters from various franchises whom they roped in for Tinkaton’s design.
Then there’s Amy Rose from Sonic the Hedgehog.
And Tinkaton’s hair is just Platinum the Trinity from Blazblue.
These characters all don massive hammers, this is actually a trope since there are more such characters such as Isuki from Sengoku Basara, Vita from Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, Felicia from Madoka Magica, Papika from Flip Flappers, Ramona Flowers from Scott Pilgrim, Harley Quinn from Batman, and even Buttercup from Powerpuff Girls Z!
Believe me, there are so many more examples of this schtick! A tough girl with a hammer. Tinkaton! All these characters with hammers are chaotic and they tend to love over-the-top cartoonish violence while also having an air of innocence in general. What a personality!
Tinkaton has that small stature, the confidence, the feisty persona, the look in the eyes… a perfect package!
Tinkaton’s Pokédex entry mentions: “This intelligent Pokémon has a very daring disposition. It knocks rocks into the sky with its hammer, aiming for flying Corviknight.”
They even attack groups of Bisharp to steal their metal and it also hates Corviknight. So much, the flying Corviknight taxis from Galar are banned in Paldea! 😯
Now, if you look at their names (Tinkatink, Tinkatuff, and Tinkaton), they’ve all got ‘Tink.’ That’s the sound of a hammer striking metal and these Pokémon are all essentially blacksmiths. In fact, their Japanese names translate to Blacksmith-chan, Middle-blacksmith-chan, and Huge-blacksmith-chan.
But, they are all tinkerers, a term for someone who enjoys working on and fixing machines! Just like Peter Pan’s Tinker Bell, a fairy who’s also a tinkerer. Amazing!
There’s one pixie-goblin-like folklore creature from the Iberian Peninsula, whose shenanigans fit Tinkaton seamlessly: Duende.
These are mischievous little creatures who come into your home to steal silverware and when outside, they are known to throw rocks at you. That’s Tinkaton’s behavior as a whole. But, here’s one specific type of Duende that we need to talk about… the Mouros from Portuguese, Galician, and Asturian folklore.
Mouros spend most of their time underground, crafting treasures by smithing precious metals like silver and gold, mined and stolen from humans. The female Mouros, known as the Enchanted Moura are particularly interesting given that Tinkaton is a 100% female Pokémon.
The Enchanted Moura are extremely beautiful and renowned for their formidable strength! The males do the smithing work while the females are the guards and construction crew. They create buildings, smash stones, and move heavy boulders. In fact, all the ancient megaliths across Iberia were supposedly built by the Enchanted Moura.
So, is it of any surprise that Tinkatuff is found in ruins across Paldea.
The Moura (female) also has longer hair than Mouros (male). That’s why Tinkaton’s hair is so long that it drags along the ground.
Fun fact: Tinkaton weighs 248 pounds while the hammer weighs 220 pounds. So Tinkaton is very strong! What’s something that’s relatively small but can carry heavier weights? Tongs, of course!
No wonder that Tinkaton’s jaws look like offset box-jaw tongs!
Let’s delve into more. Tinkaton are also gremlins, a relatively recent fae creature that came about during the Industrial Revolution. Like most fae creatures, gremlins were used as a scapegoat when things unexplainably went wrong. By “things” we are referring to industrial machines.
It was rumored that gremlins broke machines and stole the metal parts for their own construction pursuits. In particular, the aviation industry blamed gremlins for any aircraft failures during World War 2. The image below is one of the many illustrations and it fits the Tinkaton (gremlin) catapulting rocks on Corviknight (aircraft) theme! 💡
Yup, the gremlin Pokémon Tinkaton ruined Paldea’s aviation industry!
Anyway, you’d be amused to know that there was something called the Pinkerton Detective Agency, a famous group of sleuths who had even foiled the Baltimore Plot to assassinate the then US President-elect, Abraham Lincoln in 1861!
While based in the US, the agency was founded by a Scotsman, and the only other big government to hire them besides the US, was Spain! The time period, name, and the Spanish connection is a good connection to Tinkaton already.
The Pinkertons also famously hired the first female detective, Kate Warne. The group would often hire the typical unemployed folk at that time (women and minorities) to help them in strike-breaking and union-busting. This process often involved… umm, violet means to stop protests and one such way was using hammers! In the railroad and steel industries particularly, the Pinkertons used intimidation via goonish violence (including murder).
Pinkertons would often place spies among the people to dissuade them from forming unions. And just like gremlins, they would often sabotage machines and blame it on certain important people to get them fired.
While no longer as brutal, the Pinkertons are still around, recently being hired by Amazon and Starbucks.
About the Spain thingy, the Pinkerton’s biggest customers were American factory workers as well as the US government. Shortly after the US Civil War, the Spanish government hired the Pinkertons for a major task: Stop the Cuban Revolution from happening. Well, it didn’t work out and Cuba won.
But interestingly, Spain has a huge history of union busting and Pinkertons played a major role in it. In Paldea, Pinker… er, Tinkaton busts unions of Steel-type Pokémon!
And that’s all about Tinkaton! If you want to read more lore, design, and even science articles on some popular Pokémon, do check these out:
Dragapult | Darkrai | Cresselia | Mega Salamence | Dialga & Palkia Origin | Garchomp | Baxcalibur | Hydreigon | Zygarde| Druddigon | Naganadel | Drampa | Enamorus | Wooloo & Dubwool | Hatterene | Skeledirge | Morpeko |
Happy tink-a-tinering, Pokémon GO Trainers! May you get a Hundo Tinkaton! 🙂
