not all hot sauce is meant to be numbingly, stupidly hot. Much of it, historically, is actually about flavor. It's mostly the modern capsaicin morons that have marketed these highly unnatural peppers and ridiculous scoville numbers into "Sauces" that are designed for every thing but flavor...just pain.
I like hot, but at some point people are going to realize how dumb they've been with much of this. That being said, yeah: Texas Pete never was hot (they do have newer varieties of habenero and all that, though), and was always milder than Tobasco. For what it's worth, Louisiana Crystal (far more popular among locals than Tabasco ever was), is just as mild as Texas Pete. They are nearly identical. It's just a different thing.
Flavor is important because I don't deal with unnecessary bullshit like Ketchup or Mayonnaise. I like Hot sauce on my fries because the proper one for fries provides the only thing that is ever needed on potatoes: vinegar and a little salt. Some extra cayenne without all of the flavor-murder is a nice bonus. I'm more an more convinced that the "most be hotter than Hades!" hot sauce people simply don't care about food--just like Ketchup eaters!