I definitely feel like they wanted to take advantage of Wario's size and I bet they had a lot of fun with it, right off the bat in Wario Land 1 they got the Wandering Gooms and they're completely harmless and are meant to be pushed around even if...
A while ago, I saw an interesting description of Wario's abilities in the Wario Land games. That being, that he's basically like a playable boss character rather than a traditional platformer protagonist. That not only is he a villain or...