They also discontinued advertising low tar parliament cigarettes too...
Times change.
But I agree, it was a better looking and more catchy sign - signage these days, to me, has lost a lot of its class and flair. Looking at old pictures of downtowns from the 40s and 50s, with lots of nice neon signs, it sure strikes me as nicer looking, perhaps it wasnt at the time.
But I recall spinning signs, Ive seen some around now and again, and I agree that it was a great approach. I wish they were still in use. Probably what happened was as they failed, they got put into one locked position and the cheapest way to fix it was to turn it off and bolt it in place. So thats what people did.