Legacy Pikachu.

Legacy
A Toyota Ist customised to resemble Pikachu.
The ANA Boeing 747-400 airplane painted with Pikachu and other Pokémon (visible: Clefairy, Togepi, Mewtwo, and Snorlax).

As the face of the franchise, Pikachu has made multiple appearances in popular culture. In 1998, then-Mayor of Topeka, Kansas Joan Wagnon renamed the town "Topikachu" for a day as part of a promotional event for the franchise.[31] A "got milk?" advertisement featured Pikachu on April 25, 2000.[32] A Pikachu balloon has been featured in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade since 2001.[33] Its appearance on 22 May 2006 during the morning rush hour was as part of a test examining parade balloon handling procedures.[34] The original balloon was flown for the last time publicly at the Pokémon Tenth Anniversary "Party of the Decade" on August 8, 2006 in Bryant Park in New York City,[35][36][37][38] and a new Pikachu Balloon that chases a Poké Ball and has light-up cheeks debuted at the 2006 Parade.[39] The balloon was chosen on an online survey at iVillage as the second-best balloon in the 2007 Parade.[40] Nintendo Power listed Pikachu as their ninth favourite hero, stating that while he was one of the first Pokémon, he is still popular to this day.[41]

During the first episode of the eleventh series of Top Gear, presentor Richard Hammond compared an image of the Tata Nano to one of Pikachu stating "they've saved money on the styling 'cause they've just based it on this."[42] In the third season of Heroes, Hiro Nakamura is nicknamed "Pikachu" by Daphne Millbrook, much to his chagrin. He is called this again by Tracy Strauss, after which he excuses himself before punching her in the face.[citation needed] A Pikachu spoof called Ling-Ling was a main character in the Comedy Central show Drawn Together. An image of Pikachu has also been featured on the ANA Boeing 747-400 (JA8962).[43]

Pikachu has appeared multiple times on The Simpsons. In the 2002 episode "Bart vs. Lisa vs. The Third Grade", Bart Simpson has a hallucination while taking a test in class and envisages his classmates as various television characters, one of which is a Pikachu.[44] Maggie Simpson appeared as a Pikachu in a couch gag during the opening animation of the 2003 episode "'Tis the Fifteenth Season".[45] The couch gag was utilized a second time for the 2004 episode "Fraudcast News".[46] In the 2010 episode "Postcards from the Wedge", Bart is distracted from his homework by an episode of Pokémon. After watching Ash Ketchum talk to his Pikachu, he muses how the show has managed to stay fresh over the years.[47]

Pikachu was ranked as the second best person of the year by Time in 1999, who called it "The most beloved animated character since Hello Kitty". The magazine noted Pikachu as the "public face of a phenomenon that has spread from Nintendo's fastest selling video game to a trading-card empire", citing the franchise's profits for the year as the reason for the ranking; behind singer Ricky Martin but ahead of author J.K. Rowling.[48] The character placed eighth in a 2000 Animax poll of favorite anime characters.[49] In 2002, Ash's Pikachu received fifteenth place in TV Guide's 50 greatest cartoon characters of all time.[50] GameSpot featured it in their article "All Time Greatest Game Hero".[51] In 2003 Forbes ranked Pikachu as the eighth top-earning fictional character of the year with an income of $825 million.[52] In 2004 the character dropped two spots to tenth on the list, taking in $825 million for a second straight year.[53] In a 2008 Oricon poll Pikachu was voted as the fourth most popular video game character in Japan, tying with Solid Snake.[54] The character has been regarded as the Japanese answer to Mickey Mouse[2] and as being part of a movement of "cute capitalism".[43]

A newly-discovered ligand believed to provide better visual acuity, discovered by Osaka Bioscience Institute Foundation (大阪バイオサイエンス研究所?), is named "Pikachurin", borrowed from the nimbleness of Pikachu.[55] The name was inspired due to Pikachu's "lightning-fast moves and shocking electric effects".[56]
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