Meowth

Meowth is one of the original 151 Pokémon, introduced in the 1996 Game Boy games Pokémon Red and Green, and by some distance the most famous cat in the franchise. A cream-coloured feline with a gold charm — the koban, an Edo-period Japanese coin — set into his forehead, he is loosely modelled on the maneki-neko, the beckoning lucky cat that sits in shop windows across Japan.

What made Meowth a star was the anime. Nearly all Pokémon communicate only by saying their own names; the Meowth who travels with Team Rocket speaks fluent human language, and does most of the talking. His backstory, revealed in the celebrated episode 'Go West Young Meowth', explains why: a stray in Hollywood, he taught himself to speak and to walk upright in an attempt to impress a female Meowth named Meowzie, who rejected him anyway. Learning to talk cost him the ability to use his species' signature move, and cost him her — a surprisingly melancholy origin for a comic villain.

Alongside Jessie and James he forms the third of Team Rocket's endlessly-thwarted trio, delivering the punchline of their motto and a running stream of complaint. His signature move, Pay Day, scatters coins during battle and lets the trainer collect them afterwards — a small joke about lucky cats that has persisted through every generation of the games.

Nearly three decades on, Meowth remains one of Pokémon's most recognisable faces, and the maneki-neko charm on his forehead is still doing exactly what it was designed to do: drawing people in.