With the announcement of the Lake Legends Event we have finally have shiny Goldeen being released into Pokémon GO, one of the last few remaining Kanto region Pokémon that haven’t had their shiny forms released yet.
So what other Kanto Pokémon are we still missing and when can we hope to see them? Let’s wildly speculate!
Spearow and Fearow
The Kanto region isn’t known for having some of the most obvious shiny forms, but Spearow and Fearow are both quite distinctive and easy to spot! A sort of green tinged gold, they will be a welcome addition to people’s shiny collections. A flying type event, or a Kanto throwback event could potentially see this shiny released. It could drop as part of a random event like Goldeen has, as Niantic are clearly now starting to work towards getting all the shiny Kanto region Pokémon released, with the most recent events bringing Slowpoke and Goldeen.
Paras and Parasect
Paras is a bright orange, and Parasect is a really awesome golden shiny! Niantic have had a few opportunities to release Paras as a shiny but haven’t done it so far. We had hoped it could have been featured in Animation Week instead of shiny Cubone which was already in game, as it was a regular spawn, but no such luck! Perhaps we could see it in 2021 with the return of the Bug Out event?
Hitmonchan and Hitmonlee
Hitmonchan and Hitmonlee are both fantastic green shinies! With their baby form Tyrogue evolving into this fighting duo and Hitmontop, it could be a good fit for the traditional April Hatchathon event, giving us access to 4 brand new shinies via one baby. Like Electabuzz and Magmar, we hope we will also see these shiny forms in the wild eventually, as shiny baby Pokémon can be some of the hardest to access, in part due to the fact that baby Pokémon are not always featured in the egg pool. A 7km Hatchathon could mean a serious hunt for these beauties! There is also potential that just Hitmonchan and Hitmonlee are released as wild shinies for a Battle or fighting type event, as two of the more distinct fighting types without a shiny available.
Ditto
Ditto certainly looks to be one of the very last Kanto shiny forms added, because it will be much trickier to figure out the best way to introduce. Currently Ditto is catchable in game via a series of Pokémon that is disguises itself as, and then transforms after the catch. It is a very rare Pokémon, many trainers finding it can be months between sightings, unless there is an event, like the Pokémon HOME event, that causes them to be more common. This could potentially make shiny Ditto one of the absolute rarest shinies! Would the Pokémon it is hiding itself as appear as a shiny? Or would it only be shiny once it transforms? It leads to some big questions! A way it could be introduced that would be less problematic could be via the GO Snapshot photobomb encounters in an event, but after that event has finished, could it stay in game in another way? We’ll be curious how this one makes its way into Pokémon GO!
Snorlax
Fan favourite Snorlax is probably the most surprising of the missing Kanto shiny forms at this point, it has been a suspected shiny release for other events, but so far, no luck! With the baby form Munchlax, this is another shiny we could see released via the Hatchathon event, as it seems unlikely now that they would release shiny Snorlax without shiny Munchlax. It would be amazing for shiny Snorlax to be available in the wild, if Pokémon Sleep ever reappears (what happened to that?!) we could potentially see the return of the sleeping Snorlax in game, and that could be a brilliant way to release this shiny in both the wild, and with Munchlax featured in eggs. We hope 2021 finally brings us this shiny big boi!
Mew
Mew will almost certainly be the absolute last shiny Kanto region Pokémon we see added to the game. So far we have only been able to obtain one Mew via a special research quest line, and there has been no hint or tease that we will be able to gain access to multiples. Is this a shiny that we could potentially never see in game because we are only able to obtain one? We hope not, but you never know!
Until Celebi was included in a second set of special research, the only mythicals we had been able to obtain multiple of have been Meltan, (which evolves so you have to be able to get multiple), and then the mythicals released via raids; Darkrai, Genesect and Deoxys.
Could Mew eventually become an EX-raid boss with a shiny release to make it trickier to obtain, or could we see it added to the regular raid pool as part of a special event? With the release of Shiny Celebi as a guaranteed shiny through a special research quest line, maybe we will eventually see Mew this way too! We really aren’t sure on this one, but we hope to see it soon!
Which Kanto region Pokémon do you hope to see released next? We can’t wait to see how they release these shiny forms.
