For some reason, Niantic added a feature to Pokémon Go in which Pokémon can sometimes be HUGE and sometimes small. This feels like a relatively useless feature that doesn’t change the gameplay at all, but I mean I’ll definitely take a little Poochyena, please and thank you!
The Pokémon Poochyena, Mightyena, and Mawile are rolling out now and can appear in size XXS or XXL. Why only those three Pokémon? I don’t know, just ask Professor Willow. In reality, it’s probably to create a sense of excitement that they can provoke as they slowly unroll little Pikachu and big Eevee. Or, as they appear in the game, Pokémon that are far from the camera and Pokémon that are close to the camera.
Image Credits: Niantic
We’ve had Pokémon of size since the game first came out in 2016 – usually this was used for horrible Reddit jokes where people nicknamed their Pokémon after certain body parts, then took a screenshot of the rating screen, where the professor would say, “Your [body part] is big!” if the Pokémon were bigger. You know what I mean. You can’t nickname Pokémon with that language anymore, but as a consolation, there’s now a feature in the Pokédex that shows you the size of Pokémon you’ve caught If you catch a new smallest or largest Pokémon for each species in your Pokédex, you’ll get a nice little pop-up to congratulate you.
You’ll know if you’ve encountered a super-large or super-small guy in the wild because their sizes will be different. And there will be little animations telling you this. Personally, I think these animations are a bit like the animations that appear when you find a shiny Pokémon in the wild, and a big Mawile just isn’t as exciting as a shiny one, but hey, I didn’t design the game. If I did, I’d have a shiny Mawile.
