Gift Pokemon

On many occasions in the Pokemon games, you receive a free Pokemon (or Pokemon egg) from an NPC during the story; these are commonly known as "gift Pokemon". What do you do with your gift Pokemon (besides your starter)? Are you more likely to use them? Turn them down (if possible)? Take them and stick them in a box, just in case? Discuss.

Personally, I end up using gift Pokemon more often than not; there's just something...special about them, you know? The SoulSilver hatched Togepi (Shelby), Korrina's Lucario (Scen), the Cosplay Pikachu (Kaylee) and N's Zorua all ended up on my main team.

...It was particularly noticeable in Y, when my final team ended up being my starter, my chosen fossil Pokemon, the gift Lucario, the Kanto starter from Lumiose, Talonflame and Vivillon. I loved them all, of course, but seriously...that has to be the most generic team ever. XD

It depends on whether they'll be useful to me in the long run, and if it'll synergise with my team.

If it's an egg, I usually just stash it away in the PC and never think about using it other than for dex completion purposes, because the chances are it's just going to be a baby Pokemon that's inferior, stats-wise, to all the other ones I have in my team at this moment in time. Same story with Pokemon that are unable to evolve, such as hat Pikachu, because they'll just drag my team down when I could be using better Pokemon instead. If it's actually something decent, like Korrina's Lucario, or the Kanto starter that Sycamore gives you, then yeah I'd use it.

Yeah, mostly depends what that pokemon is. For example, in Heartgold and Soulsilver Elm gives you a togepi egg and I took that togepi right until the elite four, but wynaut that they give you in hoenn was just thrown into PC never to see the light of day. XD

Shuckie the Shuckle from that idiot NPC in Cianwood City. Eevee most of the time in Kanto, Johto, Sinnoh. Lapras, Hitmonlee, Extremespeed Dratini. Pansear. That's about it, most were helpful except Pansear.

In HeartGold, I put my Togepi at the Daycare Center and when I picked it up when it was around level 32, I did not like the moves it learned and I put it in PC. The Lucario Korinna gave me, I used him in my team.

when it comes to eggs, I pretty exclusively box them instantly :x
don't have time to train a Pokémon from level one during the main story

A lot of the non-egg gift Pokémon, at least in the earlier generations, almost always have a place on my team though - some of them are super useful like Eevee. Do they still have (non-Legendary) gifts like these in the recent games? I feel like I might have just be overlooking them, but Mystery Gift seems to have replaced that to some extent.

Highly depends what it is