Nintendo of America almost gave Pikachu “breasts” when bringing the character to the US

Pokemon’s global takeover could have looked very different, and Pikachu almost had a major design change.

In a resurfaced interview with The Yomiuri Shimbun, series creator Tajiri Satoshi recalled Nintendo of America’s early reaction to Pokemon during its 90s localization push.

“When I first showed Pokemon to them, they told me it was too cute,” Tajiri said. “The staff at Nintendo of America then suggested their own designs for the characters. I won’t show those illustrations to anyone as long as I live, but they kind of looked like the characters from the Cats musical.”

Naturally, they were turned down, but among those changes was a reimagined Pikachu with a very unexpected feature.

Nintendo of America almost gave Pikachu a “huge” chest

“Pikachu was changed into a character shaped like a kind of a tabby cat with huge breasts,” Tajiri explained. “They presented that kind of design to us for real. I thought it was interesting, in a sense of appreciating such cultural differences. However, I didn’t want to compete in the [overseas] market with that kind of thing.”

This strange anecdote has circulated online for years, but it resurfaced after fans translated the original Japanese interview and confirmed that the word used did, in fact, refer to breasts after many assumed they meant chest, as the Japanese word “Mune” can mean both.

Even more surprising is that this wasn’t the only redesign pitched. During a 2008 financial results briefing, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata said the company had once been shown “a muscular Pikachu” suggesting we could have gotten tons of different designs.