Machop have long tossed around boulders with super-strength and jumped over skyscrapers, but it is only with the advent of comics that they became seen as a pokemon which fight crime. In the old days, their ability to smash walls and windows and lift heavy objects made them a favorite of criminals, not young children and the police.
All that changed three generations ago, when an art student's Machop saved his life from an armed burglar in the crime-riddled metropolis of Saffron. The people longed for a hero, and if only he had the strength and speed of a Machop, perhaps he could be one. Of course, humans didn't really have that power, and Machop weren't smart enough to use it effectively, and no man could get to every crime in the city fast enough. When he solved those problems through fiction, the Machop-Man comics were born.
The franchise has occasionally struggled, but has survived multiple canon reboots and inspired many movies. Although Marvel Scale's Ariados-Man has occasionally provided competition, Machopman (as the name is now written) remains a cultural icon, is the best known and most popular of the superpower genre it inspired, and has become surprisingly popular in Orre and Unova, across the sea from its creator's native land.