A new commercial for Pokémon Legends: Arceus features a parody of the TV show Hell’s Kitchen, with Munchlax eating all of the food meant for a competition. The newly-released Pokémon Legends: Arceus is breaking sales records during its debut week, and The Pokémon Company is keeping up the momentum with new commercials for the game.
Hell’s Kitchen is a reality cooking show in which two teams compete with each other in different challenges, with members being periodically voted off by host and celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay. The individual contestants are aiming to win a job as a head chef, which means there is a lot of reality show-style backstabbing and arguments between the competitors. Meanwhile, Pokémon Legends: Arceus is a new entry in the Pokémon video game series, which is set in the ancient Hisui region. The gameplay in Pokémon Legends: Arceus shifs to open-world style exploration, with a focus on capturing Pokémon in the wild rather than collecting badges and beating Trainers. Hell’s Kitchen and Pokémon Legends: Arceus have almost nothing in common.
A bizarre new trailer for Pokémon Legends: Arceus has been uploaded to The Official Pokémon YouTube Channel, continuing to promote the new game. The trailer features an obvious parody of Hell’s Kitchen, with a red and blue team on a cooking show being judged by an angry chef. The contestants are meant to cook an eggplant lasagna, but all of the ingredients are devoured by a hungry Munchlax, played by a puppet. The commercial ends with the slogan: “It’s Pokémon, but not as you know it.”
The reason Munchlax has appeared in the commercial is that Pokémon Legends: Arceus is heavily connected to the Generation IV Pokémon games, as it’s a prequel to Pokémon Diamond and Pearl. Munchlax is a popular baby Pokémon that debuted in Generation IV and it’s the earlier form of the gluttonous Snorlax, so it makes sense that it would be used in a Hell’s Kitchen parody. Munchlax can also be caught in Pokémon BDSP.
The idea of a Pokémon Legends: Arceus commercial parodying Hell’s Kitchen might seem like a strange one, but the Pokémon franchise has a history of weird promotions. The idea of Pokémon interacting with the real world is something that has been happening since the commercials from the original Pokémania boom of the ’90s. The old Pokémon commercials used to show animated Pokémon interacting with real people all of the time, much like they do in the video games. This is an approach that is still used to this day, as the Japanese commercial for New Pokémon Snap featured kids that were about to go on a safari into a land full of Pokémon. Hell’s Kitchen might not have anything to do with Pokémon Legends: Arceus, but even Gordon Ramsay himself probably couldn’t bring himself to be angry at the puppet Munchlax.
Pokémon Legends: Arceus is available now for Nintendo Switch.
