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It's not that the "novelty" of a giant has worn off- its the oversaturation of "big men" has lessened the effect.
The problem of the WWE's fascination with guys who "look the part" is that "big man" is the new normal. Most of the knocks on guys like Daniel Bryan or CM Punk is that, in stature, they are on the lower end of the "standard" spectrum (but let's be real here, so are Michaels and Jericho... sometimes it's just fun to hate because). One of the reasons (and I'm NOT saying the only reason, so kill that noise in advance) Andre was so much "larger than life" was that he was literally so much larger in every way than pretty much everyone else. Imagine as if it were chronologically possible that Andre were consistently flanked by Undertaker, Earthquake, Yokozuna, Nash, Big Show and even the jokes that are El Gigante and Khali. Yes, he was still bigger, and yes, he had that intangable, trancendent charisma that would have taken him far had he not been so massive, but some of that mystique goes away when there is a pool of semi comparable peers.
Hell, look at Rusev. Sure, I'm no super fan of the Super Athlete, but by average guy standards, he's pretty fucking big, and by all rights, should look pretty damn intimidating. In WWE, though, he looks more like Taz taking on a room full of guys the size of Kane. We're supposed to buy into the fact that he looks monsterous, but he comes off as no more monsterous than Big E, or Cesaro, or (truthfully) Henning*, or Henry, or Show, or how they're trying to make Reigns (he's really not much bigger than the other two former Shield guys), or Sheamus, or Ryback, or Harper, or Rowan, or Lesnar, or...
There's just too many other guys for him to just stand out as "holy shit, lookit him!" and makes him seem more "meh". That is the initial trap that any giant moving foward would have to contend with.
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