It was exciting as a kid, especially in the early days of franchise food. Also the smaller menu probably lent itself to better quality. If you watch any of those restaurant rescue shows you see big menus are a constant and one of the first things the rescuer changes. A restaurant has to know who they are and stick to that, I’ve lost count of how many times McD has “introduced” salads to the menu, only to have them fail because who the heck goes to McD for a salad. But those salad failure take money, time and real estate that could be getting used to make better burgers. They could also probably due to borrow a page from Dominos and mount a “we get it, the food sucks, and now we’re going to fix it” campaign.
First “on the books” job I had as a kid was working at Gino’s, whose “Gino Giant” predated the Big Mac, and was far superior. They’re making a regional comeback here in the Northeast.