Mattel hired women to design these action figures for girls

That’s cute but I could find hairy backs sexy for all you know. You don’t have to be a sociologist to see a line of cookie-cutter models in those action figures. I can’t wait to see how they primp-out She-Hulk’s eyebrows.

That looks like real cloth for the costuming. So same reason Barbie which is much bigger has an unrealistic waist. Cause you would look dumb if you pants waist material was 4 inches thick at human scale.

Thanks for playing.

Okay that is made to specifically look like Christopher Reeve and is probably quite a bit bigger so less issues for the cloth. The wrists, waist will still be smaller than real. The boots would be crazy thick leather if scaled up to human size.
Your point? Comparing a larger collectors model to stuff meant to be played with by kids?

I don’t know why I’m still talking to someone who justifies Barbie’s waist-size by chalking it up to scale but since you brought her up, that Superman figurine is right about her size. (She’s 11.5 inches, he’s 12.)

And Barbie is still a toy not a collectors model (though some of them are).
A better comparison is the old Mego superheros.

So you are saying everyone should have generic body and super oversized looking costumes?
Love the skin colored tights for Wonder Woman. What is wrong with some actual body shape definition for a Comic Book/Cartoon character? These are not modeled on actual people.

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Careful, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. All I was saying in regards to Barbie is that your justification for her tiny waist was complete bullshit.
If you want to trot out some thirty-year-old toys and start putting words in my mouth, feel free.
While we’re on the subject of “generic looking” bodies though, take another look at the toys we’re actually talking about: same four foot legs, same demure expression, same tiny little necks, same dinner-plate eyes. Don’t people ever get bored with that shit? Sure, the heels are slightly shorter and the boobs are smaller but isn’t that really more an expression of current fashions than anything else?

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That’s ridiculous. She-Hulk is Marvel, not DC.

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Okay then Barbie is mass produced toy not meant to look realistic, has to deal with a cheaper production of clothing and costuming and is probably 1/10 the price of that Supes COLLECTORS MODEL and that shows. But whatevs you obviously have an axe to grind here and I don’t need to sharpen it for you anymore.

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Compare these stick-thin, over-elongated figures with Lammily, the doll that I gave my step-daughter and niece last year. Why aren’t we designing super-heroes with actual realistic female bodies? It’s not just the over-sexualization, it’s also the unrealistic models of what mature (or maturing) females should look like.

Yes, as they get older and stop playing with them.

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‘Realism’ is what everybody agrees is ‘realistic’, so it’s as coded as any other style. This generation’s gritty realism in acting, say, is the next generation’s mannered/scenery-chewing/incoherence/whatever. In sculpture, Michaelangelo’s David was probably hyper-realistic for its day, but looked at with a modern critical eye is strangely mal-proportioned, until you realise that it’s meant to be viewed on a pedestal, towering above the viewer. Then the reason for the strange proportions becomes clearer; it’s to make David look simultaneously normal and superhuman.

Anyone who’s painted 25mm miniatures knows about exaggeration of features in the mold and in the painting that’s necessary to give the illusion of realism to a humanoid the size of the end joint of your index finger. I submit that making a 6", 8" or 12" figure proportioned exactly like a normal (whatever that is) human being would not look like a normal human being, by virtue of being in the wrong place for our stereoscopic vision to register it as a properly-sized human [insert video of Father Ted explaining to Father Dougal about the difference between ‘small’ and ‘far away’], and its features losing definition.

Meanwhile, the figures in the OP are clearly meant to be exaggerated in a cartoonish fashion; I don’t think anyone thinks that thigh bones are around a third shorter than shin bones in humans, nor that heads are bigger than torsos or that eyes are bigger than breasts. So complaining about the lack of ‘realism’ in these figures takes a double whammy: not only are you arguing for something whose definition is idiosyncratic, but you haven’t established why ‘realism’ is desirable for this kind of figure.

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Yep. I’m a dedicated comic fan who forgets that animated-series versions of characters have their own canon.

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So 51% of the population just happen to not work as designers at a major company?

stomping around in tall boots is a good time for both boys and girls.

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Super-heroes are not actual people. I love that concept!

Seriously, it’s the hair…okay, no, wait, I’ll be serious…but it’s so HARD with those…those figures looking at me as I type…

Okay, I got it now. It all ties in with the technology we have now to produce figures that, while not totally life-like, look more like the current popular conception of the how super-heroes and heroines should look. We can blame comic-book artists and writers for that…I guess. But yeah, there’s physical attributes - breasts, for example, in the case of super-heroines - that when exaggerated at all tend to test the most imaginative kids. Even they know a chick with boobs like Dolly Parton’s doing backflips without appropriate support would get black eyes.

And I don’t think this controversy will ever go away, so I’ll go away from it. Sorry if tl;dr.

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One of the things I love about comics/animation is that crazy anatomy and costuming things can be done well and not look hokey like live action does a lot of the time, though CGI is damn good these days. It all works within the constraints of the art style if done right.

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