I think you are right. The period of time in the mid to late ’90s was a VERY dry period for Wacky collectors. Topps was showing no interest in the franchise. Some hard-core collectors were producing their own items to keep the Wacky spirit alive. Thus the Lost Wacky series and Xpack series of that time and these NSU binders. Topps seemed to look the other way to these enterprises, seemingly out of disinterest in anything Wacky. I was just starting to slide away from the hobby about this time because most activity was concentrated on the buying/selling/trading of the original Wacky art that had been auctioned by Topps. it was basically the only new Wacky game in town. But it was too big-money for me with two young kids and building a house, etc. I also seem to remember it as a time highlighted by lots of internal fighting between several of the really hard core collectors. The Prodigy service at that time had a Wacky Packages forum that was that day's equivalent to this forum. Seemed to be lots of fighting over art deals nd these various non Topps projects. Kind of a dark period in the hobby from my point of view.
My understanding is that NSU had permission from Topps for their binders. Certainly wouldn't have been a good idea for a non-sports card magazine publisher to get Topps mad at them!! The NSU binders really are nice, and I kept my sets in them for several years. I wish Topps had gone with just 4 binders too. 17 OS binders will take up a LOT of room! Way more than necessary. Then, there are all the Old School, ANS and postcard binders. Next thing you know Topps will be offering limited edition Wacky bookcases to hold all the special binders!
The late 90's were great for me as a Wacky collector, as I finally had the money to really pursue completing my 1-16 runs. I bought beautiful complete sets of both 1 and 16 from a collector I met through ebay. Somehow, I was totally ignorant of the art sales, and the existence of forums. Think it was around 2005 when I stumbled across Greg's forum.