Except for the time they said power customization (colors) would be too hard to do ...
I've been an app developer for longer than many of you have been alive and sometimes it's just that devs get locked into looking at things a certain way. Don't lose hope; some new kid might look at the code and go "Aha!"
They never said it would be impossible, they only said that it would be a massive amount of work. That's a big difference from "we can't figure out how to get there from here."
I'm open to being surprised, however. But if it was as simple as removing the brawl attack from the pets, I'm sure the old team would've done that.
I still recall the devs saying they didn't want to remove brawl from the pets in the old days, not that they couldn't or that it would be too hard.
That is how I remember it too, they probably just wanted pets to run up & get owned.