They are seemingly a way to register a product's technical design for protection, rather than an outrageous fictitious claim of innovation over something that has been around 40 years. They contain unusually detailed (rather than abstracted) sketches, they contain some very specific measurements in specific claims.
I think some of the more egregious uses of patents in the past have blinded us to the sheer scale of the use of the international patent system to protect designs from copycats and to allow companies to develop unique design languages.
I think we may often misunderstand why patent claims are structured as they are with seemingly obvious introductory claims. It's because a patent has to be self-contained, as far as I understand it at least?
Even our fucked up patent system is unlikely to grant this, so why are they even trying? Is this just busy work for their overpaid legal teams?