Honestly those cases would not have helped your mac any. It has a substantial amount of shock protection already from the case, if you open it up you can see how the corners especially have plenty of room to deform before hitting something important, and if you are smacking that computer hard enough to deform the corners the thin plastic case might as well be a piece of paper. Maybe they help prevent scratches which could hurt resale value potentially.
It's not necessarily unreasonable to take some additional steps to protect your essential tools that would be very financially inconvenient to replace. What's "reasonable" of course depends on the details. But that doesn't necessarily mean suffering along with inferior products (computers, cameras) because you're afraid they'll get stolen or damaged (which insurance can mittigate against to some degree).
One important thing to remember, at least for me, is I just had significantly less disposable income back then. Replacing the MBP would have been financially impossible for me, so I took more care of it. I'm in a much more privileged place now... so replacing something like this would only be a significant inconvenience.