Female figures don't sell... we've heard that song and dance countless of times. Most recently, some dude gave his opinion on this topic... you probably never heard of him. He's Todd McFarlane, Creator of Spawn, the big boss at McFarlane Toys. A guy who knows less than Jon Snow... He made his point in a hyperbolic and somewhat crass way, but he is right...
... from a certain point of view, as Obi-Wan said.
Historically speaking female characters "Don't sell" as well as male characters. There are a couple of reasons why:
-They are the easiest figure to get wrong and hardest to get right.
I mean look at 80s Scarlett from GI Joe... most of the April figures from the OG TMNT by Playmates, or NECA's Toon April, some of the MOTUC females (Double Trouble, Frosta, Glimmer, Point Dread Teela, Club Grayskull Teela) ToyBiz Marvel Legends Black Cat, Rogue, Scarlet Witch, Hasbro's Emma Frost, the recent Jean Grey, Famke Jansen Dark Phoenix, Retro sue Storm, etc... the point is that we could nitpick female figures a lot more than male figures.
-The sexist mentality surrounding female characters...
There are many layers here. The ones I personally faced were the following:
"Playing with female figures would make me gay". As stupid as it sounds, this was one of the reasons I was unable to have a Teela, Evil Lyn, Sorceress, Cheetara, Steelhart, NONE of the She-Ra figures... April somehow managed to avoid the ban for the fact that she packed heat...
A subset of this was: "Female figures are dolls, not action figures and boys don't play with dolls".
Playing with figures that represent the female body was bad, but Playing with scantily clad well-oiled men who "grope each other on a giant four post bed" is totally straight. So, if I stayed at my aunt's and didn't bring a few MOTU figures with me, I would be stuck playing as Bow, bored out of my mind because She-Ra and friends were having sleepovers at Crystal Castle talking about Bow and stopping Catra from getting in. I couldn't play as Glimmer, Mermista, or hell, even Catra because "dolls are for Girls, not boys"... Playing as Filmation intended was mostly reserved for the times my cousin took her naps and she left her POP unattended.
It was made worse when my cousin wanted to play Barbies with me... I was Ken, of course, but Barbie and her friends went to the mall in her car, or in crazy Adventures while Ken stayed at home watching TV and hanging out with the guys. Couldn't drive the corvette because it was Barbie Pink and Ken can't drive a pink car "because he's a boy..." and I was like "It's a Corvette! I don't care if it's pink. I WANNA DRIVE IT!!" IF I was lucky, I could drive the yellow camper van and my cousin was one to remind Ken WHOSE camper that was. The few times I could use the camper, it always ended up with Ken and the guys going on a camping trip up in the mountains... in retrospect, my Ken was either a closet homosexual or a MGTOW...
With TMNT on the other hand she was more involved in gameplay and April was more actiony... until "she outgrew toys". April fought the foot and kicked ass with her gun...
Point is that some outdated mentalities on both males and females have an adverse effect on children's playtime. Especially from "very macho" cultures like in various Latin American countries.
-"They don't sell"... There have been cases where some female figures end up being peg warmers, due to a combination of the above issues... OR the character is incredibly unlikable (like Rey Palpatine).
A subset of the "they don't sell" mindset comes from the people making a stink about "lack of female representation" in toys... I mean the people who whined about it on Twitter like the where's Natasha? Campaign that ended up with a Marvel Legends Black Widow peg warming for some time... or the excess of Rey Palpatine from both TFA and TLJ clogging pegs with Jyn Erso. Or how much the "internet darling" I am Elemental hasn't had a wave 3 since the 2017 wave 2 and most of the figures canceled be bought WELL UNDER THE MSRP on eBay and other sites for collectibles. I know I bitched a lot about the toys being more focused on being a Social Justice Experiment than actual toys, but after 2 years and a bunch of hype, this line faded away, fueling the "female figures don't sell" angle.
Netflix's She-Ra: First the Twitter and Tumblr folks attacked fans of the True She-Ra because it was "a 30 minute commercial" and that the "better She-Ra didn't need to sell toys"...
Mattel made toys that ended up in clearance rather quickly... the same Twitter and Tumblr folks whined about collectors not supporting the new She-Ra... while THEY didn't buy the toys either.
When Disney got a hold of Star Wars, they tried to hype the female characters and everybody on Twitter, Tumblr and various websites and blogs were hyping the female characters, but none of them was buying the toys.
-Last but not least, They're short-packed. To compensate for the potential Peg-warming, Female figures often get short-packed. You can say that Teela sold less figures than He-Man if for every 1 Teela figure there are 4 He-Man figures.
So most of the issues stem from a self-fulfilling prophecy...
Female figures don't sell, so the companies put less effort on the female figures, which end up looking far worse than the male figures. They don't sell.
So yeah, Todd IS right that female figures "don't sell"... I hate it, but it's true. If the slacktivists put their money where their mouths are, MAYBE we'd see positive change.
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