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Other than the points others have made I have an extra snippit to add. I quite liked your point about the ratio of female characters to male in the figure sector. While I would never say no to more male figures, I do think to a certain extent that they are often executed to a higher standard since they aren't pumped out as quickly as female figures due to the popularity difference.
If we're looking at the nendoroid market from a few years back now (not the shit show GSC is today), when Orange Rouge took a nendoroid design it would generally be a male character. Perhaps its just the quality of their manufacturing, but I think since they were given the majority of the male liscences they just got really good at producing them.
That is the wonderful world of Specialisation!

But specialisation only works when there is a variety of choice and manufacturers developing new and specific niches to perfect. Just look how absurd FREEing's prices have gotten. But since they have a monopoly over the more SFW 1/4 bunnies, you either have to go without or just pay those prices.

honestly, if you wanna see how this wouldn't work in real time, just look at how insanely popular series like one piece and sailor moon are handled by megahouse. they have pretty much Entirely exclusive access to these characters, and while some megahouse figures are quite good (like the portrait of pirates line), a lot are horribly overpriced and under quality expectations, but get bought up at rapid rates anyway bc say it with me: We Have No Other Choice As Fans. any monopoly situation like this will always lead to abuse of quality and price like this. Always. this is why we'll never have one piece or sailor moon nendoroids despite it seeming like a no-brainer as far as popularity, and why the unlicensed statue scene for sailor moon and one piece especially is so huge! as to note for sailor moon, the garage kit scene as well since that thrives more for non-shounen series as statues tend to skew shounen by demographic. I would kill for something like sailor moon or one piece to get like, any sort of regular fun 1/7th figure releases that aren't toei site exclusive and a complete gamble on if they turn out well or not. not to mention if you don't take the gamble and they do turn out well, you'll be looking at 5x increase in aftermarket prices because of the exclusivity. this just got relieved for nico robin's miss all sunday portrait of pirates figure, which was 50K or more in the aftermarket for nearly 3 years until her rerelease this winter was announced.

we're not mad at you for having a different opinion about multiple figure releases for one series or character, it's common to get annoyed with one character dominating the choices or having vastly different quality figures of your fav. but everyone is telling you that this opinion is a bit undercooked simply bc we have proof of it not working. I hope my comment has been informative!

Honestly I think the problem is rather the amount of prize figures from the same character one company makes than the other stuff. Like Taito with their Rem figures with some having like 5 color variations or Bandai Spirit & Sega with almost all of the Demon Slayer figures where there are not that many outfit changes or differences but they don't even make use of the ones there are (for example Tanjirou with his outfit from the first episode or when he's at the end of his training or the final selection). Instead make sepia color variants & for some figures it's at least the fourth rerelease. Scale figures imo nowadays sometimes need just more time to really turn out great. They come out so fast sometimes & that makes some of them sloppy. Of course there's also the problem with cutting corners anyway for example GSC with Nendos. So many of them lack accessories & faceplates but they don't really have to bother because people will buy them anyway, even when the quality is awful (like the Kaguya-sama Nendos). That stuff wouldn't get any better if there would be less figure companies. It would only become more. I love how many choices I can have for some characters but honestly figure companies should read the room & instead of prize Tanjirou No. 200 make someone from a different anime that has no or only 2 figures. I don't need that many Tanjirou's even though I love him. Especially if there are barely any differences between them.

Monopolies or virtual monopolies inevitably lead to abuse of the position

What we have now with lots of companies is healthy competition to make good use of the IP they licence and produce figures that customers want.

Companies that consistently produce poor quality will end up either being a small part of the market or will go out of business to companies that satisfy customers needs.

We consumers won't always get what we want and some IP holders will make things harder for some reason but otherwise we get good choice and reasonable quality even if prices appear a bit high at the moment.
Still if you are willing to wait for releases then there are some bargains to be had.

Mharzel • 2 days ago • #125610890I get your point, but lets say hypothetically it's one of those limited only to "x" amount so they don't mass manufacture and it's kinda pricey like maybe I don't know $350. Wouldn't this be better in a way it'd be pretty hard to go and abuse customers if you don't mass produce and since it's limited edition you typically need to convince the customer the figurine is worth at this price point. Granted there's no company like this per se, but if there was and let's say they only abused to only have the IPs for them but provided exquisite figurines at a reasonable price point. Would it be great?
So you want to make a limited product for a VERY high price already, by a monopoly. Yeah, no idea how this could go wrong. Those figures totally won't cost two or three times the price after release, since they're scarce, and company totally won't use this to milk more money.

Mharzel • 2 days ago • #125610890I get your point, but lets say hypothetically it's one of those limited only to "x" amount so they don't mass manufacture and it's kinda pricey like maybe I don't know $350. Wouldn't this be better in a way it'd be pretty hard to go and abuse customers if you don't mass produce and since it's limited edition you typically need to convince the customer the figurine is worth at this price point. Granted there's no company like this per se, but if there was and let's say they only abused to only have the IPs for them but provided exquisite figurines at a reasonable price point. Would it be great?

You're arguing for some kind of perfect solution that can't really be put into practice under real world circumstances and as such I don't see a reason for trying to defend it.

All figures produced are technically finite. All retailers have a set number of orders for a figure and depending on how well the Preorder period goes they might make more, keep the same or order even less(if the last option is available). There was an article written by a user on here over a year ago talking about this. The writer was at the time the owner of a small figure shop based in the Philippines and he described how predatory the whole "Limited" thing was. Here is a link if you wish to read it for yourself - BLOG #55301 .

Figures that aren't massed produced are usually Resin figures, Garage Kits or special alt colour versions sold exclusively at in person only events. Those are the only cases where they say in concrete terms what the production number is.

If a shop says that a figure has only X amount of preorder slots this will have the opposite effect of what you think it would. This will trigger FOMO in the minds of buyers who will put the figure under less scrutiny because they would be under more stress to PO instead of think about it objectively. Same figure would also become a target for scalpers who will make alternate accounts and buy more of said figure to later sell on Ebay or directly sell the preorder at an inflated price.

You've got the order of things all wrong. Companies make a prototype of a figure that's polished to the max and take pictures of it with perfect lighting from perfect angles. They then use those photos to get you to preorder. After you preorder the company isn't legally bound to give you what you were sold on because they all have a disclaimer that the final product might not look exactly like the promotional prototype. However people don't think about that when clicking the "Preorder" button.
Edit: I want to give you an example. This figure didn't have any support beams for her shawl on the promotional pictures. So when people preordered her they didn't think "Hm, that shawl looks heavy, they might give support beams to keep it from deforming or breaking the figure" they thought "Oh wow, she looks great. Really love how they made her shawl!". The beams aren't optional either, because from what I read in the comment section the shawl is too heavy and without beams it might damage the figure over time. Much like how B-style Jibril's wings would sag if people didn't put something to hold them up.

Your argument would have more merit if it was a situation where you bought things locally and in person and they already have the product ready for sale and not preorder slots, which just isn't the case in our hobby.

gotta agree with sugar sadly, with the exception of 3dprinting b'full the more anime figure companies, the better

"Let's all let a single company monopolize the entire market. Surely they will try to remain competitive and would not abuse their position to exploit customers and prevent any competition!"