People like to give Nintendo shit these days for making the Mario franchise incredibly bland and sterile, every spinoff always having the same 12 characters and they leave Plessie/Tatanga/insert ANY Mario RPG character here to rot in the Nintendo vault. They're not entirely wrong but I gotta give Nintendo credit whenever every so often they decide to make a random Mario whatever a "thing again" and it feels like they never left the franchise. This game was the massive comeback of the Tanooki Leaf from Super Mario Bros. 3, with the power up being all over this game's boxart, all enemies getting their own tanooki variants, and the Tanooki Leaf becoming a mainstay of the Mario franchise again. It appeared in Mario Kart 7, most of the Mario platformers following 3D Land, a Smash Bros. item, you get the idea. Other examples of things becoming a thing again are: 3D Land being the start of Boom Boom showing up as a boss again, Pauline making a big comeback with Odyssey, King Bob-omb and Chargin' Chuck slowly starting to make their way into spinoff rosters, Foreman Spike being in the casting call for the Mario Movie, Swanky Kong turning up in a Mario Movie poster, the Ninji starting to reappear again. the Ninjis are legit the most "yeah that exists" Mario enemy because they appear in so much stuff but they're very unmemorable and no one talks about them. I don't know if its just me but it genuinely feels like they spawned in Mario Maker one day and were just part of the franchise from then on. All I'm saying is that there's always hope your favorite obscure Mario scrunklo will randomly make a comeback and start appearing in Mario games again. 2023 is the year of Ostro, everyone's favorite Super Mario Bros. 2 enemy, lets go!!!!!!!!!