Single product variation swatches are only displayed for products added BEFORE

Hi!
applying product variation swatches layout to single product view only seems to work for products that I had in the store before installing the plugin. new ones still show dropdown …and displays the styled variation inside the dropdown

page uses Oxygen builder and there is only one template that serves all products.
I have tried clearing all possible caches, checked on different browsers, deactivated, and reactivated the plugin, but still nothing