In the Ring

So today I went to the dollar theater and saw Real Steel, it was awesome. I thought the concept of the movie was really cool. One comment made in the movie really stuck with me. At one point when they are in the scrap yard looking for extra parts and they see an old head and Charlie explains to Max that the reason it looks so different than what they see in the fights then was because when the robot fighting first started they wanted them to look as close to human as they could but that had changed. This made me think how often do we miss big changes or jumps because they sneak up on us in small increments?