It’s funny how tar came out first. Then cpio came out which was a lot better but tar had the momentum and it never lost it. I still find cpio more controllable and use that as a preference.
My WOW with cpio is pretty elementary. I've never found anything in all my usage to shudder about. Possibly there are smarty pants usages in there that could make you shudder I don't know. But why choose smarty pants if elementary is perfectly satisfactory.
But cpio existed when I first used Unix in 1982/3