Even though some were aweful, they were genrally equally aweful (especially in the early series.) Most of the robots had some sort of problem that made them sort of evenly matched.

I agree with Joey when he says that it was about fun but I would like to add that it was also a new thing and there were no tried and tested methods of winning (not counting US competitions before because they were just pure combat i.e. no games like football.) The fact that it was new meant that people didn't know and therefore underestimated the requirements for a combat robot, e.g. battery capicity and armour, making for some rubbish robots.

For some reason I feel like I've read into this too much