Err, there were, prepare to feel old "Cookie consent pop-ups first started appearing following the adoption of the ePrivacy Directive in 2002" 25 years!

I beg to differ, there absolutely was cookie popups. We also had popup windows, popup ads, java applets that melted your cpu, and browsers with no grid. Oh, and we had Shockwave and Flash…

I think they meant that the use of cookies for analytics/tracking, which is what triggers the popup requirement, would have been considered malicious.