Why did the people in toy theater look so charmingly old fashioned?

Toy theaters never had people in them. They consist of cardboard sheets printed with the scenery that slides into grooves on a wooden, proscenium-fronted stage box and are manipulated from above using sticks so are completely inanimate. The figures representing the actors are cut out from sheets of stiff card to represent characters from fairy tales, plays and pantomimes and are then stuck on to little bits of cork so these figures could be moved around the cardboard stage of the Toy Theater and were called 'card people