The Puppy Pokemon looks like Snarf from Thundercats.
And the mushroom Pokemon probably has the Pokeball design on its head because if it had the "traditional" red and white spots on it, it would look too much like a Super Mushroom from the Super Mario series. What better way to represent Pokemon then to put a Pokeball on it's head!
All the other Pokemon, in my opinion, ARE AWESOME! We have equivalents to geodude, machop, zubat, oddish and a whole bunch of others! I think the people at game freak did a very clever job to introduce a far away region in order to have such similar pokemon. And the fact that there isn't any other generation 1, 2, 3 or 4 pokemon in the wild makes it feel like it really is a brand new region!
The starter evolutions are MUCH better presented when my favorite artist Ken Sugimori has drawn them. At first I didn't think they were real when they were shown on that sheet along with their 2nd evolutions, but it was because I didn't want to believe. But now, seeing them up close and wonderfully drawn has finally caused me to love them just as much as their pre-evolved forms.