What? How did they not catch on? Do you mean why the court cards changed?
I think he could be referring to the art style. It did catch on - except that this particular design was probably considerably more expensive at the time it was made, the kind of deck an upper-income family might have in the house for games among friends. Even in the antebellum years, a basic, decent-quality deck of cards wasn't the cheapest thing in the world - for some, it could add up to a few days' pay or more. In most "Old West" saloons, it was the bar that owned the playing cards used by the patrons, and they stored them after closing in a multi-deck press to flatten them out and get more life out of them.
Additionally, the big game wasn't poker like you see in the movies all the time - it was faro, a bastardization of "pharaoh" and the name of a popular gambling game where the players competed against the house. It's where the faro shuffle came from; since it was important for the players in a game of faro to separate pairs of cards that had come together during play, a perfect weave shuffle was used to break up those pairs. It wasn't too long thereafter that some people who ran these games discovered that when you perform eight perfect weave shuffles where the top and bottom cards don't change, the deck is restored to its original order!
But I'm rambling. The style of art in that deck is still used in some decks today that are far more affordable than they were back in 1895. The style tends to be more popular in Europe, France in particular. Certain French Tarot cards are made in this style - in France, there's a game called "tarot" that uses the cards of a tarot deck that's designed for play rather than cartomancy, with simplifications of the art in comparison, proper indices and the use of traditional Anglo-Rouen suits. In some ways it's similar to what you're trying to accomplish with your deck design, except that you're trying to create even more court cards rather than a trump suit (what in a cartomancy tarot deck would be the "major arcana").
Cards like that are less common in America for one huge reason - by and large, the people who play with cards like the traditional style that has developed here over the past couple of centuries. Dyed-in-the-wool poker players, from amateur to pro, want to use 100% standard decks with standard art - anything else gets dropped on the kids' table for them to play with. Break out a case of that deck type in a professionally-run poker room and you'll have a revolt on your hands in no time flat.
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