This page was inspired by Sarah Dyer's wonderful pages on female action figures. Not only has she expended a serious amount of time and effort to share her knowledge and opinions with the rest of the world, her priorities are similar to mine and my girlfriend Andrea's. We all prefer at least somewhat realistic human physiques (no huge breasts and wasp waists) and attractive faces. Cool costumes are fun, random bogus accessories a waste of time. Characters that can actually stand on their own are desirable.

Sarah doesn't like figures with big feet (unfortunately, that seems to be the only way some toymakers can make figures capable of standing without help). Andrea and I are really picky about facial details.

Kylie (Real Ghostbusters), for instance, is a bit of a caricature, and a good example of the spectrum of our acceptance of weird faces. Sarah thinks she's kind of cute. I think she's eyecatching, but not for gazing at. Andrea's phrase was "She looks like she got hit with the punk rock ugly stick."

One where I feel more strongly is the Wai Lin (James Bond Women) figure -- this one is based on a movie character portrayed by the actress Michelle Yeoh. I had high hopes for this one, because Michelle is attractive (she was a Miss Malaysia) and quite buff (I really prefer healthy looking folks to stick figures). Unfortunately, the figure looks more like a repaint of The Melting Man. The face is horrid! Sarah is again more forgiving, claiming it's "actually not that bad."

One of my standard rants is Batgirl. Here is a character that should be appealing in any version (Yvonne Craig and Alicia Silverstone fill the character's shoes wonderfully). However, the action figures leave much to be desired. They tend toward the skinny, busty look that's just inappropriate, along with narrow, unhappy looking faces. Not much fun to look at. For my part, I've decided to repaint a different figure into a Batgirl. It turns out the 12" Cher figure from the Clueless TV series looks more like Alicia than the Batgirl figures do, even though the Cher part on TV is played by another person! Better yet, the Clueless figures didn't sell well at all (and were apparently made in huge quantities) and therefore are available easily and cheaply in the clearance sections of TRU.