I'd guess that their unpopularity largely has to do with their low production values. Lots of strip sets were very cheaply made, and some of them are simply ugly. W517 is a notable exception, and isn't really like most of the strip sets. If it's unpopular that fact might have to do with its size, 3x4 is hard to display with the rest of a collection. (If you collect them raw, for example, you can't put them into a binder.)
That said, not everybody is upset at their unpopularity. They do make some really inner-circle hall of famers available to collectors on a tight budget. I've got Grove and Alexander strip cards that would have probably been beyond my price range in a more ordinary set. And I recently saw a W516 Cobb sell for $60 on eBay; granted in truly terrible condition ('poor' didn't quite do it justice), but still, somebody got a Cobb for sixty bucks.
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