something i've always wondered about IQ

[breadmaster]

this is a longshot, but this board has surprised me before, so here goes!

I was putting away my decks from the tournament, and was looking through the binders.  as we know, most 3 stat characters got 2 specials in the IQ set.  13 characters only got 1 special.  I was wondering if anyone had any insight into why

the characters were

thing
war machine
*rhino
*doc ock
silver surfer
---
captain America
hulk
cable
---
banshee
blob
iceman
juggernaut
*scarlet spider

some observations

-the 3 with asterisks got a hillshire farm card.  they are the only ones from the list that didn't get a monumental special

-they are split pretty evenly throughout starters, boosters, and power surge.  all 10 mission control characters got 2

-if we split them roughly into 4 groups (xmen/spiderman/ff/avengers), we get 5/3/2/3.  nothing too shocking here, as there was an abundance of mutants as x-men was really popular at the time

captain America and hulk stick out to me.  I realize that both were less popular in the 90s, but they were still iconic characters.  the rest are borderline, with thing/juggernaut/surfer being slightly more recognizable

so...I'm stumped.  was it simply that the set was getting too big, and some cuts had to be made?