IIRC The didn't take on mainly because the plastic around the steel base washer got chewed up. Plus they weren't cheap and sometimes difficult to find the components.
I know 16ga reloaders would kill to have a compression formed hull like them today and they could name their price but agree with what you are saying
Many said they were ahead of their time with no brass base and Kent buying them out took care of the rest

Cheers
BP has a good write up on them
What (Were) "Activ" Hulls?
Activ hulls were produced by Activ Corporation of Kearneysville, WV in the 1970s through the late 1990s. The shells utilized a material they called "biaxial" which basically meant that the "grain" of the plastic allowed the hulls to stretch lengthwise, but not outward.
Biaxial material allowed "off the press loading" without resizing. For this reason, Activ hulls were preferred for built-up specialty handloads. As the illustration depicts, the steel ring, molded right into the hull's base, gives the Activ great structural integrity. The plastic conformed well with roll crimped loads and Activ hulls could be rolled over and over again without deteriorating. In the field, Activ hulls cycle through almost any automatic -- making these hulls an easy fix for a frustrating gun problem.
Skived mouths of the Activ hulls provided a perfect platform for roll crimping. You could use your choice of an 8 or 6 point. There's a multitude of sporting clays loads for Activ, ranging from 7/8 oz. on up. High-performance field loads for upland, waterfowl and slugs.
We miss the old Activ hulls, but modern technology has produced new hulls that work just as well in all applications, and even better in some. For instance, the new Multi-Hulls have the same large capacity and versatility for crimping along with superior longitudinal strength - an advantage over the former Activ hull.
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