I wonder if Trubbish and Garbodor would have been better received amongst the fanbase if they had been based on cockroaches, accumulating trash around themselves as camouflage/armor.

*shrug* No idea.  I think I might have liked them more that way.  I have kind of a weird relationship with Trubbish and Garbodor, though, in that the thing I most disliked about them had nothing to do with the trash/garbage aesthetic. I was more upset because I felt they were just a rehash of Grimer and Muk, which is something that was kind of a recurring theme with me throughout Black and White – I was annoyed by how many of Unova’s Pokémon seemed like one-to-one replacements for the absent first-generation Pokémon.  So I can’t really speak for the fanbase there.