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I've always seen Poliwrath as a "failed" design and Politoed the "complete" version.
Looking at Poliwrath's beta design, you can see the designers had the idea of a "frog king" but they sort of just dropped that and made a bigger/angrier Poliwhirl as the final design. But then later elements of that design were used for Politoed.
It just seems to me like the designers couldn't figure out how to properly flesh out a frog king evolution for Poliwhirl the first time around, and took a second a shot at it. Also maybe it's just but it seems like they favor Toed more than Wrath and it'd be funny if it were because of this.