>>280642289
Eh... I kind of agree with you. Some of the designs look a little weird, and they don't pose that great of a threat. But it's a smart decisions if you really think about it.
It's like with Vegapunk being unable to recreate logia devil fruits where it's a lore decision that could mess with the power balance of the world if smile fruits were the exact same as normal Zoans. You're able to create an army of devil fruit users with apparent drawbacks that even successful cases could end up like Dobon. There are other long-term payoffs here and later on which I didn't like, but the smile fruits were balanced in a way I appreciated.
Think of it more in terms of the themes of unethical shortcuts being worse than authentic devil fruits.