You ever wonder if Birdo from Mario 2 was inspired by the Snowths?
http://www.mariowiki.com/Birdo
Although I have not found any evidence on that, I am pretty much convinced that it was the case. This Birdo character was not created for the Mario franchise, but rather for the videogame Doki Doki Panic, released in Japan in 1987 as a merch for Fuji-TV's Dream Festival '87 (Yume Kojo '87), where Birdo character's name is actually Catherine. It was created by Tadashi Sugiyama (Nao Sugiyama), who was working for Nintendo since 1983 and had worked previously as a graphic designer for a couple of Nintendo games, including Zelda II. For Doki Doki panic, Tadashi worked as the enemy-characters designer, and was credited under the alias Sugiyan. Therefore, he is credited as the creator of "Birdo" (actually Catherine), back in 1987. Doki Doki Panic's protagonist characters were Fuji-TV's Yume Kojo '87 festival mascots, , all of which wore turbants and outfits reminding of Indian, Pakistani and Bangladesh culture. The enemies (created by Sugiyama), on the other hand, were lizard-like anthropomorphs, while others had very peculiar outfits and many wore masks (an element central to Fuji-TV Yume Kojo '87`s mascots, which were inspired by Brazilian Carnival and, around that theme, also by Italian-carnival masks) - that is to say, elements that were not particular to Japanese culture or imagery. GTV has a brief documentary on Yume Kojo '87`s mascots design, although Birdo (Catherine) remains as Sugiyama`s creation for the Doki Doki Panic videogame, as an enemy character not previously seen in any of Tuji-TV's creation. Many Japanese games, advertisements or even mangas were inspired by American or foreign video culture, and Catherine (Birdo)'s similarities with the Snowths are very suggestive of Sugiyama being inspired by them. As for the Snowths, designed circa 1969 by Jim Henson, they were first named Snouts - a mix of snout with mouth. The tubular shape of their mouths and their pink color are a very central part of their design, and so it is the case with Catherine (Birdo). The cronology, the main design elements and the notoriety of Jim Henson`s Snowths (1969) allow us to infer that his characters were an inspiration for Sugiyama when he created Catherine (1987). Finally, the videogame Doki Doki Panic was only released in Japan, and Nintendo decided to port it to the Ocidental market (mainly for the US) ad a Mario Bros game, since the original Mario`s sequel (known as Mario Bros 2 in Japan, and later as Mario - The Lost Levels in the US) was not doing well. While porting Doki Doki Panic as a Mario Game (released in the US as Mario Bros 2), Nintendo substituted the original playable characters from Doki Doki Panic for Super Mario Bros characters (Mario, Luigi, Peach and Toad), while maintaining the original design of enemies and everything else. Many other (now) classic Mario Bros enemies were actually from Doki Doki Panic. Nintendo had a very strict policy regarding not giving proper credit to designers and people who worked for its videogame projects, and there is not may information around it.