Agreed, Mewtwo was highly original and a MUCH cooler character than Lucario. Mewtwo is also widely known throughout the Pokemon community because he was the last Pokemon in the game. EVERYONE knew who Mewtwo was. Wtf is this Lucario? Is this what you call fanservice or just flicking us off with this rubbish.
Toon Link is an excellent replacement for Young Link. But if they scrapped Young Link altogether, Toon Link really isn't needed...
Ridley could have been the second (much needed) Metroid character, but they simply... didn't go with it... They made him a boss, but who's going to play SSE in a couple years? Seriously, ever since I saw Ridley in the SSBM opening, I was like "I'M PLAYING HIM IN THE NEXT GAME" (too bad I was disappointed the day it came out).
Wolf really was a big middle finger to the community (the part of it that actually cares). We needed ANOTHER space animal clone (and another Land Master). There could have been many many Assist Trophy characters and such that could have been better replacements.
Sonic was tied with Geno and another character I forget. Sakurai himself said that Geno was considered 1st party. It would've been an easy negotiation with Square over the rights for Geno. Choosing Sonic is just brushing up with Sega with the totally rubbish "Mario and Sonic at the Beijing Olympics" game. I don't see the point of having the popularity contest if you weren't going to consider the results anyway.
Just another note, Mario would have been l33t if he had a Doc costume on. Wario got his ugly overalls costume back, why can't Mario have his stethoscope?
God Sakurai, just get good characters like Ridley or K.rool some $%^&ty movesets, have them extra characters in SSE (much like Jiggly, ToonLink, Wolf), and give them an effing Land Master... JUST AS LONG AS WE GET GOOD CHARACTERS.
But.... the one thing the popularity contest did was raise Nintendo's awareness of the characters that the gamers loved the most. Geno and many others scored HIGH on the list. It's up to Nintendo to use that information in its future developments.