Your metaphor cuts both ways.
Electoral college is like 3 lambs and 2 wolves voting for what's for dinner. Lambs live in one state and wolves live in two states. Wolves win even though they are numerically the minority.
Your metaphor simply exposes a risk of any sort of majority rules, it's not specific to popular vote systems.
The System didn't anticipate the maturation of the political landscape into a steady-state of two enormously wealthy parties that exclude any disrupters, and thereby between them decide what's selectable for dinner from a menu of two choices. Do you want that lamb with mint sauce or without?
Not once on electoral coverage did I see votes for independent or third-party candidates listed.
System's working as intended.