Female Action Figures - Lot less of them than male?

Female Action Figures - Lot less of them than male?
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Action Figure ChatterI was talking with someone at another forum on a topic about action figures and customizing. The person to whom I was talking with explained that when it came to female action figures, no matter what line, there were a lot less of them compared to the massive amounts of male action figures. For example, the G.I. Joe line which has almost 1 female character to every 35 male characters. After he pointed this out to me, I began running through all the action figure lines I grew up with or have seen throughout the years and I began to notice them, like how there's only one female figure for The Walking Dead comic book action figures (Michonne) to the three male characters (Rick Grimes and two zombies), while The Walking Dead TV show action figures have no female characters at all.
So, I'm beginning to wonder if this is true with most, if not all, action figure lines. Are there any particular lines that have just as much female characters as the male characters? Or are all the female characters in all lines stuck under the glass ceiling? And what are your thoughts about the lack of female characters/overabundance of male characters in action figure lines?

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Posted by
CB2001 on Thursday, March 8, 2012
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Why would a ST:TNG toy line be 50/50? There are seven or eight (if you count Wil Wheaton) main cast members two are women so if only a quarter of the main cast is female why would half of the toys be female. Especially when you rerelease popular characters over and over sorry if Picard in a zoot suit sells better than background or guest stars.
I think the most successful Star Trek line was Playmates right, feel free somebody to correct me if I'm wrong. Look at the number of female figures that where released for that line its not 50/50 probably wasn't even 30/7 but it was a lot. The first year you got almost nothing but there are couple of the later years had what I consider an acceptable ratio of female figures. Like I said sure there are females on the show who they didn't make figures of but all the main cast members male and female got made and probably most of the more important secondary cast members. Which female character do you want a character of that playmates didn't make?
The only lines I ask why on are the ones missing a key figure, say the Willow line why didn't I get a Sorsha figure, or Iron Man where is my unreleased Scarlett Jo Black Widow but I don't think they should start throwing in figures just to be fair.
I figured that Star Trek and Star Wars would have at least half of their figure lines be female characters, especially with the massive universes that those properties have introduced to fans over the years and the massive amounts of characters also introduced. I would think that the Marvel Universe line would also have that same kind of ratio. But even then, the female to male ratio is still male heavy and female light (at least from what I've gathered from past posts and from the discussion I had at the other forum in which this topic was first discussed.
The best way to make your argument would, I think, be through the comic lines. I love Marvel, I collect Marvel Universe. So where they certainly do a better job than say G.I. Joe (although they have a much larger pool of options) it still seems like not enough. You can ask why was Sue Storm the last member of the FF to be made? You can ask why when dealing with the X-Men it's not a more even split, aren't X-Women as popular as the guys? You can ask if you go to say comics should be good and look at their list of top 100 Marvel characters and start at one and move backwards you start hitting the females with no figures first? The top 3 who don't have a MU figure yet Emma Frost, Beast, and Rogue,and I assume they don't want to spend the money molding a Beast.
I wonder if part of why there are fewer female figures has anything to do with boys not being supposed to hit girls? Like if they don't produce many female figures then little boys won't pretend Spider-Man is karate kicking Black Cat through a wall or something and get the idea it is ok to hit girls.
However, there are some properties that have a lot of female characters, but I don't know how many of them make the jump over into figure form. All the Star Trek shows and movies are one example. Star Wars is another one. But can it be said depending on pre-existing properties, they also have a barring on the figures produced. Farscape is one I can think of. When ToyVault produced the line, which was around Season 2, the only primary female characters for the show were Aeryn Sun, Zhaan and Chiana (thus they were produced as figures), but the ratio of the primary female characters to primary male characters are still smaller, because there were more primary male characters on the show (such as John Crichton, Rygel, D'argo, Pilot, Crais and Scorpius, with all but Pilot being produced).
The Walking Dead isn't the best example either since we're already talking about a small sample size but go ahead and list what characters you'd want from either source of the Walking Dead. How many women are in the top ten, top twenty? Michonne is the only female in my top ten and I might add comic Andrea or Maggie (but only if it was a two pack with Glen) to the top twenty and sure if I collected this line I would eventually love some lady zombies to round out my horde. This I think relates to how terrible woman can be written, especially the Walking Dead t.v. show none of the female characters have been likeable to me.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer had a line of action figures doesn't it, I could see it having more females than males but that's about the only one off the top of my head.