>>3000562Since their literal explosion in popularity both in and out of Japan in the early 2010s, traps have increasingly become obligatory anime stock characters that are beginning to appear in almost everything.
Before the mid-2000s DEDICATED trap characters were a lot less common and less widely-known even though they did exist, Hibari-kun being probably one of the first ever "true" traps ('70s). Also way back b4 the bridget meymey terms such as "trap" were not in parlance and "otoko no ko" didn't yet have an exact English counterpart term.
Before the more dedicated trap fan base emerged over the last <5-10 years it was much more common to see the old-fashioned "male MC cross-dresses to infiltrate x hoping not to get discovered for 1-2 episodes" gag (though that also still happens a lot).
TL;DR retro traps are much fewer and far between. Pic related.
