I don't really understand the hate for Pokemon like Vanillite, Trubbish, etc. It's become trendy to dislike them for some reason. You can suspend your disbelief enough to battle, trade and raise fictional monsters but you can't believe that there are Pokemon like objects in the series (it's Pokemon, I ain't gotta explain ****)? I get it if you dislike the design but complaining merely because it's ice cream or trash or whatever is unreasonable. There are worse concepts for Pokemon, which is something I could go on and on about.
Anyway, rant over, it just irritates me. :/
To answer the question though, I prefer both so as long as the design works for it. There are some really cool object Pokemon like Chandelure and tons of awesome animal-based Pokemon too.