I think you guys are taking the character chances a bit too seriously. From what I've seen, Nintendo adds characters based off two requirements: popularity and importance to the franchise. Now obviously, we have those like Mario, Luigi, Peach, and Bowser who satisfy both requirements. However, recently we have seen characters like Waluigi and Daisy who have somewhat slipped into games without consideration to the second requirement. These two are insignificant to the main Mario series as a whole with the former having not appeared outside of the spin-offs as of yet.
Now how did these two get into so many spin-offs? They satisfied the roles of being the partners for Wario and Peach respectively and gained fan bases. Birdo was been quite "dead" in the series until MT64 introduced her revival as Yoshi's partner. It doesn't matter if Birdo was made prior to Yoshi as she only returned and became recurring thanks to the partner system in games like MT64 and MK

D. If it wasn't for the partner system, I'd imagine that Birdo would be in the same situation that Wart, Mouser, and all the other SMB2 exclusive bosses would be in right now.
Now all of this also applies to Toadette. She was created as Toad's partner; however, that here is the problem. During the late N64-early GCN era, Toad started to decline in playable appearances in the spin-offs (thanks to Camelot's dominance) and this was really his worst era of appearances as he lost a lot of importance here. As a result, his own appearances (as playable) were rather shaky/limited and due to this, there was more of a concern as to whether or not Toad himself would get into a game and only after this had happened would this allow Toadette to seem plausible. Very much like any of the other partner based characters (their own appearances were mostly based off their partner's appearances - they cannot stand alone without them).
As of recently, Toad has somewhat been revived and has been featured as a playable character more often. I think that thanks to Toad's own more recurring appearances, Toadette stands a much stronger chance than before and this will become increasingly obvious by the near future. Remember that the spin-offs we've had so far during the last four years are mostly collaboration games (between Nintendo and other companies) and games consisting of limited rosters due to time constraint. We did not get any games with seemingly large rosters as like in the past. Once we get some Wii U Mario spin-offs in order, Toadette will surely make her grand re-entrance back to the series. I'm sure of it! Her fan base has always been a strong one and she has quite a history behind her as well in the spin-offs (as well as PM: TTYD and a cameo in SMG). :-D
Her absence in
Mario Party 9? I somewhat put that blame on Nd cube as there is a limit as to the amount of characters they could use, and I guess they couldn't fit her in based off of all the rebooting they did to the series through that game. Though judging by the fact that there is no references to her at all in the game, I'd imagine that she might have actually been planned as a playable character at some point of time and was cut later on. I might be wrong; however, that is what I think. It's unusual for a playable character to simply be cut with no references in the next game. Toadette had a prominent role in
MPDS, so I'd imagine that her cut was not intentional.
★Plum★ said:
NO Toad should stay as the ref it's what hes good at.
I don't know. I personally think he's better off as a playable (considering that he was one of the franchise's earliest playable characters and there are fans who are willing to play as him [myself included]). We could always get the generic Toads or Toadsworth as a substitute for a referee.
