If I remember correctly it was more of a balancing issue than the fact that the type itself was an afterthought. Since it resists most of the common types, it’s pretty hard to hit, and you can only counter it with ice types, and with only 8 Pokémon even being able to learn any ice moves, those were hard to find (which includes Seel and Shelder who aren’t evolved yet, and Articuno which was hard to get). So I think they just decided to keep the Dragon type as a final boss type and not let it show up anywhere else. Same thing happened to Psychic before they balanced it out afterwards. Those things are terrible to run into in Gen 1.
1 Like