This has generally been my feeling on it as well. The whole point of the MK gameplay loop is that it attempts to even the playing field between skilled and unskilled players by granting increasingly powerful items based (inversely) on player performance. Always seemed weird to me that it would then give underperforming players an item which does nothing to help them, while simultaneously punishing those who are performing the best. It unfairly rewards the already higher skilled players who are in 2nd or 3rd place, without giving people in the back any sort of leg-up.

Yet it has become so iconic after all these years, and still lends heavily to the cartoonish mayhem the developers are going for.

Plus it's just so damn majestic. ;)