If complimentary colors are "ideal" then why is yellow/purple not more common?

Yeah, you’re just not looking hard enough. Back when tobacco companies were allowed to sponsor racecars, Camel used yellow and purple. Ugly as all get out, but it got your attention.

Funny tangent: Marlboro used the same color scheme as their box on the racing livery, red on top with white point below. In Europe, where tobacco advertising was banned earlier/more harshly than in the US, they ran the familiar red and white colors but with all mentions of the brand name replaced by a barcode which, as legend has it, is the UPC on a pack of Reds, but more likely is just some vertical lines of different weights that look the same as the text when zipping past at 200mph. Although if anybody were to conspire to get a UPC that looked like their name blurred, it’s be the tobacco companies.