> understandable
It's not! The original is FUNNY (to children). They're weird squiggly mascot things with no opposable thumbs or even arms, and then one of them has a human woman's hairstyle out of the blue, and then they FLIRT. It's a joke. Like there's an episode of Futurama in which a capricious godlike being turns out to be a misbehaving teenager of its species and gets told off by its mom — it's not theological commentary on the veneration of Mary, it's a joke.
People who go "uh it's bad to hit on female Goombas" are autists who want to fuck female Goombas.
The other issue is they're fucking with the original. It's not a bad practice per se, especially when it comes to children's stuff. But now, when cultural information is readily accessible, I wouldn't fuck with it in long-form works. No changing A Dog of Flanders to Old Yeller, for example.
Jokes, wordplay, and internal references, OK, nothing else. Even patriotism isn't a good reason anymore, we aren't hurting for lack of content like in the early days of children's literature. If something is subversive and gay, keep it away from children.