Is Pyukumuku a joke Pokemon?

Question

This Pokemon learns absolutely no attack moves aside from counter and bide. Is this supposed to be a nod towards sea cucumbers being peaceful creatures or is it supposed to be the next wobbuffet?

Comments

Might have a niche in Baton Pass/Toxic set up, although I can't see how it would work.

---

I thought I read somewhere that the "job" you can do at the Resort, throwing the Pyukumuku back into the sea, is based on a real thing that happens in Hawaii with actual sea cucumbers.

That being said, it does somewhat resemble Dunsparse in functionality, just with a potentially more interesting Ability...

---

Dunsparse has good moves and a good ability. The only thing holding it back is its stats.

---

Cosmog is worse than Magikarp. Let me prove it

Magikarp: Has a movepool of Splash, Tackle, Flail, and Bounce. Ability Swift swim and Rattled. Has 2 weaknesses, Grass and Electric.

Cosmog: Movepool of Splash, and Teleport. Ability of Unaware. 3 weaknesses, Dark, Ghost and Bug. And it evolves to legendaries. I think it was to taunt Magikarp. Congratulations, Lillie and Sun and Moon, You ruined legends!

---

how did it ruin legends?

---

A Pokemon who is worse than Magikarp evolves to legendaries. and in the story line you find a wild Solgaleo/Lunala and  you can also find a lvl 5 Cosmog.

---

No. The worst Pokemon is obviously Pikachu.

---

Well Pikachu is bad... But Sunkern has the lowest stats of all Pokemon.

Answer 1

It is actually better than you may think.
It gets the ability Unaware, one of the best abilities.
It gets Psych Up Baton Pass. It may be situational, but it can have a real surprise factor.
It can support with Purify, Soak, Taunt, Helping Hand, and even Memento for Mean Look or Shadow Tag setup.
It can work well in trick, being tied with Shuckle and Munch lax for lowest speed.
It can heal itself with Recover or Pain Split, and with those defenses, that it powerful.
Swagger let's it annoy the crap out of the opponent.
Counter let's it strike back after barely surviving.
And finally, it can be really unpredictable with its surprisingly open moveset.

Comments

Innards Out is even better than Unaware. It forces opponents for be very careful how they play against Pyukumuku as it could take out or significantly weaken their Pokemon if they knock it out too quickly. This can be highly disruptive if the opponent's best way of taking down Pyukumuku happens to be their win condition or their main counter to your own win condition. Unaware is niche on this Pokemon honestly, and other Pokemon (Clefable) do it better regardless.
Thought I would also mention, this Pokemon plays as a pivot and does a pretty good job of it. Slow Baton Pass is great to get momentum and Memento (sometimes with Z-Power which restores the replacement Pokemon's health as well) can be helpful as soon as Pyukumuku is expendable. It's nothing fantastic, but I can see it being popular in lower tiers once those roll out in a few months.

---

Pyukumuku has pretty bad health, so innards out would only Ko some pokes.

---

Pyukumuku always runs full investment in HP anyway (peaking 314) so it is taking a very decent chunk out of everything. Also, every Pokemon with base 86 HP or lower gets knocked out from full by Innards Out if they run no investment -- this means Pokemon like Kartana, Xurkitree and the Tapu Pokemon could go down if they risk knocking out Pyukumuku from full. Base 86 and below covers a broad expanse of the metagame and becomes even easier to manage with prior damage and Pyukumuku's access to Recover.
Knocking out Pokemon isn't necessarily point here either; if Pyukumuku can put a Pokemon in range of an important attack using its ability then it has done its job.

---

The problem though, is that Pyukumuku will have to be slowly koed, so the final hit would not be that much.