Top 10 Best Designed Pokémon With Hats

With Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl coming out later this year and Pokémon Legends: Arceus coming in the spring, it is a good time to reminisce about the visual designs of these creatures and what makes them so special. Pokémon designs take inspiration from many disparate sources including animals, mythological creatures, inanimate objects, fashion, among others. The best-designed Pokémon usually do not contain too many visual concepts and have one or two details that help tie the entire concept together.

An interesting subset of this includes Pokémon that have hats included in their imaginary biology. Like many a complete outfit, the inclusion of these hats on certain Pokémon can make the design stronger and more cohesive.

10 Slowking

Evolving from the bumbling, lackadaisical Pokémon, Slowpoke, Slowking maintains most design features of its previous form but with a few twists that make a different cohesive design. Slowking, instead of treading on all fours, walks upright and often with its hands clasped behind its back. It also gains a red and white collar, and a shell crown atop its head. All of these visual signifiers come together to produce imagery of regality.

Slowking presents a great example of visual design matching a character’s name and concept. The collar resembles both a lifebuoy, pointing to Slowking’s water-typing, and the dress of a monarch. This with the stance and shell-crown completes the picture of a majestic, regal creature.

9 Smeargle

Smeargle is not one of the most popular Pokémon, but its design is executed excellently. Smeargle hails from the Johto Pokémon region and is inspired by the imagery of an artist or a painter, which is telegraphed by the word “smear” in its name and by its signature move, sketch.

Besides those clues, Smeargle also has a paintbrush tail and a beret-shaped head that ties the visual concept together. The kind of hat its head resembles immediately signifies a the stereotypical image of a serious creative, meaning anyone ignorant of Pokémon could likely guess its concept from a picture alone.

8 Honchkrow

Honchkrow’s design makes it look all business, and its feather hat sells the whole concept. Honchkrow best resembles the image of a mobster, from its expression to its arrangement of feathers. For instance, it has its chest puffed out and a sly expression, evoking the confidence and power of a mob boss. It also has white chest feathers, making the rest of its black coloring resemble a suit jacket.

The thing that sells this design concept the most is, of course, its plumage fedora. The big, bold, biological hat along with these other design features points to an image of confidence, power, and panache.

7 Mismagius

As a ghost-type Pokémon, Mismagius calls upon spooky cultural lore to inform its design. Its main inspiration is the imagery of a witch. Its deep purple color, gemstones, and constant floating already point to something mystical – but the fashion design elements bring it all together like a witch.

Mismagius’ body looks like a long, flowing dress and it appears to have a large-brimmed witch’s hat. All of these elements together bring forth the concept of an enchantress, and because the hat is so striking it would be easy to determine the design’s influence from the silhouette alone.

6 Hatterene

This one should be obvious; it has “hat” right in the name. Like Mismagius, Hatterene is another witch-inspired Pokémon. But instead of a more traditional spooky witch, Hatterene has more of a pastel witch design with bright pink and blue incorporated throughout its body. This connects to Hatterene being a dual-type psychic and fairy Pokémon.

Of course, this soft-toned witch design is sold entirely through the hat. The top of Hatterene’s design has a pointy blue hat with a long tassel that also functions as the creature’s hand. Each of these pieces fits together to make the picture of a cute and witchy design.

5 Galarian Weezing

New regional Pokémon forms present the opportunity to update a Pokémon’s design with new elements and themes while still keeping a degree of familiarity to make it interesting. The new Galarian form of Weezing, updating from a pure-poison type Pokémon to a combined poison/fairy type, does exactly that. Weezing before was a blob of two faces that emit pollution, and the updated design incorporates two hats and mustaches. This design revision also renews the visual themes masterfully.

Galarian Weezing’s hats resemble both tall stovepipe top hats and the polluting towers of an industrial factory, and its mustaches are made of the smog from its own noxious gasses. These features combined point to both aristocratic executives and smog-producing factories simultaneously.

4 Tapu Bulu

Tapu Bulu’s headgear is not a traditional hat, but it does add to the overall design beautifully. The two appendages on either side of its head appear to be a large wooden mask split in half. But the ingenuity of this design is revealed when these head-accessories are closed around the rest of Tapu Bulu’s body, which makes a figure resembling a bull’s face.

Each of the other three Tapu Pokémon also has this feature of hollow appendages closing to reveal an alternate design facet. Tapu Bulu, however, is the only one of the four that wears these on its head, providing another sound case of clever hat incorporation in a Pokémon’s design.

3 Appletun

Appletun is a unique Pokemon, as it mixes a lot of unexpected elements together. It evolves from the grass and dragon type Pokemon, Applin, which has two eyes and a tail (a clever play on words as a ‘wyrm’ in an apple). Appletun expands on this concept through evolving and becomes a quadruped apple pie dragon.

Appletun’s back holds cross-hatched ridges that look like a pie crust, and atop its smaller head is the hollowed-out top half of an apple. This further sells the design evocation of a fruit pie but also gives the Pokémon more personality as the apple hat helps to shape its facial expression.

2 Polteageist

Polteageist has perhaps one of the punniest names in all of Pokémon, but it does signify the design concept well because it is a ghost-type Pokémon made of tea. Polteageist lives in a teapot, which is the most crucial element of the design because otherwise, it would just look like a blob.

This Pokémon’s hat does not sell the whole design concept, but it does work as a finishing detail that increases the overall charm of the design. When Polteageist is not poking its head out of the teapot’s spout, it pops up from the top and wears the teapot lid as a little hat. This helps give the Pokémon more personality and becomes a memorable design piece.

1 Mime Jr.

Mime Jr. is one of several pre-evolution baby Pokémon that simplifies its evolved state in some ways but also incorporates its own unique elements. Taking design cues of its original evolved form, Mime Jr. keeps the jester/clown aesthetic while also somehow removing the uncanny design aspects of Mr. Mime.

Mime Jr.’s hat is blue, tall, and a bit floppy with a white puffball on the end. It is a simple element of a relatively simple design – and this simplicity lends itself to the overall concept of a cute and tiny jester reminiscent of an older, more infamous design.

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