My point was that despite the TCG being Japanese, people still give WotC - which simply translated the game and slapped on hideous yellow borders - undue credit; just read the last comment on this thread below. That sentiment is definitely popular.
Not sure where you grew up in the nineties, but that’s certainly not how I remember them. In the dubbed version of the Pokémon anime, they called an onigiri a “doughnut” because it’d be too confusing otherwise. That pretty much epitomizes how sheltered Western audiences were.