DEAR DOLL COMPANIES...

There's a terrible modern trend with doll lines that is leading to failure faster and faster.

A LACK OF CHARACTER DIVERSITY.

When I say character diversity, I don't mean by race or anything like that. I mean the creation of lines with several distinct characters.

Monster High did fairly well with diversity, although it was slow to start out. However, by the end, they were refusing to make characters the fans wanted. Namely, the boys. The handful of boys that got made got a few releases each, but instead of those, we should have seen more of the male cast, like Pharaoh (probably the most wanted of the missing males), Johnny Spirit, Andy, and my personal favorite, Romulus. Other boys got treated poorly. Deuce went from a chef, a concept that had a lot of potential, to a surfer-speak moron. Clawd was one of the smartest boys in school and he devolved into a series of dog jokes. Jackson and Holt were never developed properly and then tossed aside. Invisibilly had potential, but also never got the screentime he deserved, even having one of his dolls import-only for those of us in the US. The girls from MH got a bit of a fairer deal, but others never needed to exist at all. The interesting, unique, completely outside the box Operetta got replaced by the incredibly common, trite Catty Noir. Casta Fierce, the long-awaited witch, was toned down by being yet another pop singer like Catty, a concept the line never needed. Wydowna Spider never got her real chance to shine, despite being one of the best designed dolls in the entire line. By the time the reboot came around, longtime fans were very disappointed in the drop in quality and felt the cast and concepts were now too kid-friendly. (Not a point I agree with.) The reboot had some stellar things. I'm still mourning the lack of a Silvi Timberwolf signature doll! And the animation style for the new webisodes was far better than the CGI the older movies used, though not as good as the original animation style.

Monster High's sister line, Ever After High, started out immediately with problems. It introduced a large cast with several important male characters, then proceeded to barely make any of them, despite being far more relationship-focused than Monster High was, what with the whole destiny theme and so many prince/love interest characters. I think they did better than MH when it came to quickly producing more female characters, but the gaps left by the males were glaring. Only three boys got proper dolls with the same level of articulation as the girls: Hunter Huntsman, Dexter Charming and Alistair Wonderland. Daring Charming and Hopper Croakington II should have been part of the early lines with Sparrow Hood getting one shortly after. Daring finally saw two dolls much later, but with less articulation. Future releases brought in girl after girl, but every one ignored some of the best designs in the show: the background cast. There was a huge outcry when Rosabella Beauty turned out to be basically Briar in glasses instead of the background cast member many people wanted it to be. At the end of the line, the lovely animation designs were not getting dolls anywhere near as good. Meeshell Mermaid was the main victim of that and Justine Dancer suffered from a poor design both animated and in doll form. Random silly characters were getting dolls, like the stupid pixies. I'll forever be disappointed that the line ended before we got Ramona Badwolf, one of the best designs of the entire show. 

Winx Club, a line made by many toy companies over the years, has always been a victim of this lack of diversity. Over multiple lines by multiple companies only two of the male cast ever got made into dolls, even though every single one of them was an important character in the series. The primary villains got slightly better treatment...eventually. In the US, Mattel had control, but they only made one witch doll and without her proper makeup. I'm convinced the Winx line died in the US, because they kept making the same fairies over and over with only one boy and one witch to go along. Italian Giochi Preziosi gave us all three witches with the correct makeup, and years later, other companies made all three witches and even action figures of them. But other prominent characters were ignored. No doll of Princess Diaspro exists, despite her being a major character. No doll of Mirta, who would have sold well during Seasons 1 and 2. Only the European companies made Roxy. I could never understand why Jakks Pacific left her out when their inaugural Winx line was for Season 4, the season when Roxy is most important. The boys were a glaring omission from the Jakks action figure line, too.

You wouldn't think something Disney would be doomed to fail, but Star Darlings was one of the fastest failures I've ever seen. The line had an absolutely perfect set up. There were 12 diverse alien girls, each based on a zodiac sign. They had different body types, skintones, hairstyles, clothing styles. In alien form, they had shimmery skin and unnaturally-colored hair and eyes. But each girl also had a human disguise for trips to "Wishworld" (AKA: Earth). So right there, you've got 24 different dolls. TWENTY-FOUR. The initial lineup wasn't bad: 5 of the girls in their alien looks, plus 2 of their Earth looks, and 2 Earth looks for characters that didn't have an alien doll. Buuuut...that was it. Only one other unique doll was made, an alien look for one of the two that got an Earth look, but she had to be imported. What did Jakks make instead? Yeah, Jakks again, the ones that bombed Winx. They made the same alien characters over and over. And over. Packaged with fancy stands, packaged with rings, packaged with books, packaged with instruments. The same dolls over and over and over. This incredibly stupid lack of diversity mixed with the shocking difference between the decent book series and the terrible webisodes killed a promising property. Way to go, whoever made those decisions.

Back to Mattel. Their current mess up is DC Superhero Girls. This started out SO WELL. The character designs were excellent and plentiful, although leaving Katana out of the initial lineup was a flub. The webisodes and movies were fabulous. The books are great. Seems like they couldn't screw it up, right? Wrong. Lack of character diversity has brought this line to a new low. It's getting a Lauren Faust reboot with the flat out UGLIEST designs I have ever seen in my life. It didn't need a reboot. It needed a doll line that actually provided new characters for kids to buy, instead of Wonder Woman, Batgirl and Supergirl a million times. I'm furious that the reboot is so ugly and we'll never get dolls of Miss Martian, Star Sapphire, Lady Shiva, Big Barda, Thunder and Lightning, the Female Furies, Lena Luthor, Cheshire, any of the BOYS, Mera, Raven, the new Green Lantern girl, and the list goes on and on. There are more well-designed characters left unmade than ones that got made. But no, they didn't make the right doll choices, so the line is being overhauled by someone who has absolutely zero grasp of anatomy. I like some of Faust's stuff, but I wish she'd tried to do something with Milky Way and the Galaxy Girls instead of ruining a property that might have been fixable.

So now where are we? We barely have any character-driven doll lines thanks to these errors. Hasbro has the upcoming Marvel Rising line, which at least looks promising. There are several characters, including one male, in the initial lineup. And Just Play is producing the Hairdorables with 12 distinct characters that have specific interests, personalities and looks. Even their 2 additional looks per character as so well-designed and different that none of them feel like you're buying the same doll in a barely different dress. These two lines give me hope, but I want toy companies to look at the errors of these other lines I've mentioned. GIVE US MULTIPLE CHARACTERS. Never think repeating the same dolls over and over will make a successful line. It will not and in time, I'll be writing about you like this, too, unless you provide some diversity!