[Kong]

True a mascot's main purpose is recognition and Mario is the most recognized video game mascot by a long shot but look at how he got that status. In the 80's he was the bundled game with the most popular system therefore nearly everyone that played a home video game in the 80's played Mario. However this was not because Mario was the best Mascot. It was because Nintendo did not play fair and forced all third party developers to develop only for NES or not at all. So even though the SMS was better than the NES, NES won because they had more games.

The TG-16 lost to Genesis in America because of some unfair practices of their's. Bonk is much more popular in the rest of the world than he is in America.