This post requires some explanation, so bear with me.

Some time ago on the forums, someone posted a very disturbing picture in the Tingle’s Rosy Rupeeland thread. The image depicted a character named Pinkle, and as far as I can tell, Pinkle is a drag queen version of Tingle who wears a pink bra, hotpants, and fishnets. That in itself would be terrifying enough, but another comment on the similarity of Pinkle’s boob swirls to Poliwhirl’s tummy swirl triggered a mental flashback to something that happened to me many years ago.

Although I already posted the following story pretty much verbatim on the forums, I figured that it would be timely and appropriate to post it here given the recent interest in discussing Pokemon.

Back when I was in my Pokemon phase, I went around buying a veritable buttload of Bulbasaur merchandise. One of the best items I found was a Bulbasaur pencil sharpener, which came in a desk set with a Pikachu stapler, a Jigglypuff tape dispenser, and a Poliwhirl tape measure.

The Poliwhirl tape measure looks like your average plastic Poliwhirl with a measuring tape sticking out of his armpit. But even I, in my Bulbasaur pencil sharpener frenzy, did not notice what the game store clerk did. As I checked out with my new desk set, the clerk confided to me that when they’d gotten the desk set in, he and his fellow store employees spotted something very, very inappropriate about our friend Poliwhirl.

The tape measure, unlike the auto-retractable kind, needs to be wound by hand. The winder, naturally, involves Poliwhirl’s spiral tummy pattern — when you wind the tape, the tummy spiral spins around. As you may expect, the winder needs a handle. And this handle — a protruding white knob — is located along the outer edge of the white area. When it’s at the lowest point of its arc…well, you can imagine what it looks like.

(For those of you who haven’t figured it out, it looks like Poliwhirl is sporting an ERECT PENIS.)

When the clerk pointed this out to me, he added that he and his co-workers frantically tried to spin the tape winder on all the Poliwhirls into a less phallic position. Not that most kids would probably notice — but you can bet that the store would end up with an earful from irate parents. Like that one mother who complained about the penisy gyroid outside your character’s house in Animal Crossing. It’s just not worth the hassle to explain to those people that EVERYTHING in a video game is phallic.

But I digress. The moral of the story is that Poliwhirl is the pervert of the Pokemon world. And if this frightening She-Tingle is some sort of Tingle/Poliwhirl lovechild…well, it wouldn’t be all that surprising, really.

And there’s probably already a fanfic about this.