I'm in favor of them, personally. Just like hand poseing is important from an artist's standpoint for expressing emotion, the toes can also be used as well. (Just depends if they are seen or not.) Google Burne Hogarth's Tarzan artwork for some excellent examples of using toe posing to enhance dynamic posing. Or Frazetta, or Mike Ploog as well. As far as resource waste? In a few years, we'll all have 3 or more gigs of ram, and faster computers anyway, so I'd rather have more, then less. But the joint setup in them was really bad, and needed fixing. (the toes, for example have only one bone for bending, and technically need 2.)

Way too many people take way too many things way too seriously.