Eventually, things like Khan Academy might prove a lot more useful in making math and science a culturally desirable field.
I think the problem is expecting some "nice" (friendly, etc) way of teaching math, which dilutes their content (like Disney-fying a novel).
The Russians we are comparing here, don't have any "better" teaching methods. They just suck it up and study what's there.
Tough there is no fry, their math book are almost game like, with few carefully built example and very clear explanation using only some diagram when needed (consequently their book are quite small) and the exercise are absolutely not rote based, except the first few exercice, and even then they all serve to illustrate a specific part of a concept, all the others are puzzle like problem.
Putting lots of full color image is not making math "fun", well built and interesting problem is.
Not entirely. A lot of it is problem solving exercises as opposed to rote solve 20 exactly same problems in row seen in us books. Memorization won't help you solve those exercises. There is also les focus on arithmetic and more on equations much sooner.
If you actually like math, you will prefer Russian exercises, cause they challenge you.
I used to study for my engineering entrance exams with the Problems in General Physics book by IE Irodov. They were some of the most challenging and creative problems that I have ever solved. They are quite interesting and require critical thinking to solve. Even the problems I later studied in actual engineering courses didn't come any close.
The books by Russians in any of the STEM courses are really well written and approach problem solving in a way that most American and/or Indian books don't.