...Epona's not keeping the best company with these newcomers in bold, to be fair, though she's also beating them all by this AND there are several LoZ-characters mentioned in bold so perhaps the series can run deeper with strong characters than we once thought. I mean, it's only the top series here (and G4, we recently discovered)...surely there's a chance worth taking for her!
I'll still defend some of the other characters in bold for a second though: Dark Link's potential is quite large, Navi has a lot of recognition, Jigglypuff would do a lot better outside of a vote-in with MissingNo/Mudkip/Toad in the same poll, Ivysaur would be okay since most things Pokemon are fail-safe, and the term "Koopa Kids" would do better than any particular kid (like how "Ghosts" did better in GameSpot's Villain Contest than any individual Koopa Kid would have). Even if you don't like these arguments, Epona's still got the most legitimate appearances of the group. Should she do well, she would make the rest of them look a little better too...outside of Popo, who would still suck terribly (see "Nana").
If you still don't like how she compares to other newcomers, just compare her to the whole list. She's #9 out of seventy characters if you count SSB-appearances, and she's in a five-way tie for second place out of fifty-two characters if you don't. Not being in the SSB-series will hurt her, but she's got a strong resume for strength in a way that not even any Noble Nine member outside of Link and Mario can touch, too.
She'll be hard to beat.
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http://img812.imageshack.us/img812/3492/eponaharr.jpg
Nominate E P O N A.