Frankly, that article has problems. Only three direct quotes were provided. One explicitly put the kibosh on Toad and Toadette being siblings ("But I think what I can say is that Toadette and Toad are not siblings -- perhaps it would be more accurate to say they are adventure pals. And thats certainly true here [in Captain Toad]"), but the one about Toad genders is actually a lot more ambiguous than the article's writer leads us to believe: "This is maybe a little bit of a strange story, but we never really went out of our way to decide on the sex of these characters, even though they have somewhat gendered appearances" - that's all we can be sure that Koichi Hayashida said, and frankly, that sounds like like Nintendo's stance on Toad genders is "lol idk", not "nope, no genders, they just take on gendered roles" (whatever the hell that even means). And really, given Nintendo's fondness for whitewashing plot and making things ambiguous (i.e. "Toad and Toadette are not siblings"), "lol idk" actually seems like a much more believable stance than what the article's writer's proposing.
I wish Gamespot would post the actual interview. The full context and content of what the dude said would make the whole thing a lot more credible and usable as a reference. The third and final quote isn't even understandable without the article text framing it: "Hayashida clarified that Toads are not mushrooms at all, but the resemblance and nomenclature is too uncanny not to wonder. This particular riddle might stay unsolved, Hayashida said. Thats one of the great mysteries of the Mario universe." - seeing as the paragraph above that was acting like one mushroom eating another mushroom is cannibalism, maybe all he was saying is that they're not the same as Super Mushrooms and whatnot.
Hell, the whole cannibalism is idiotic nonsense. If one species of mushroom (i.e. a Toad or Goomba) is a cannibal for eating a completely unrelated species (i.e. a Super Mushroom or a 1-Up Shroom), then you might as say we're cannibals for eating unrelated species of mammals like cows or pigs. That's not how that word works.
