squirtle, along with bulbasaur, have better stats than charmander. However, once squirtle has become a blastoise, you realize that you may have made a mistake. Blastoise only has ok attack, defense, speed, and special stats. It has horrible HPP amounts, which is very dissapointing, consdering that it has a giant shell on its back. Hydro Pump is the water equal of fire blast, however water types have less stregnths than fire types, so blastoise looses to charizard there, as well. blastoise can use surf, but charizard remains a better choice because lapras has better stats, learns hydro pump sooner, and has some strong ice type attacks to choose from as well. also, its not like you have to go off and catch lapras. just talk to the sliph co guy in the same room as when you face your rival at sliph co. blastoise does learn rain dance at level 46, which can be quite useful, but watch out for electric types, because Thunder always hits when its raining.