>>9811134>They're just comparable to everything around them.For mass market toys? Don't kid yourself like that, because we're getting more bang for our buck than anyone else.
>McFarlane struck this huge balance between sculpt, paint, detail, articulation, etc in the 90'sI wouldn't call that a balance, since he maximized it all for the time... except for articulation. GI Joes/Cops/etc were all better articulated. Maximizing articulation didn't happen until the 00s, where he was putting in almost as much as we see today (except crazy random placement).
>-they PALE in comparison to what he was putting out some 20+ years ago.Blame the current situation of everything becoming fucking expensive, because 3 years ago his Call of Duty and Borderland figures had a shit ton of paint and a shit ton of articulation. They're basically the archetypes for the DC and other modern figures. You can still see that in his more expensive figures, like Cygor.
> Also the very soft material he uses for a lot of things just ends up leading rubbery parts that lose a lot of detail.Please show me some examples. Apart from pointy ends not being blood-drawing-sharp, i've never seen detail being lost on rubbery parts on ANY toys. GI Joes had those silicon vests/harnesses that has detail as sharp as anything outside of fragile resin cast builds. The only time detail is ever lost is the same reason detail is lost on ALL resin/plastic stuff too: complex objects need multiple molds made because of the limitations of ALL molding processes. Like guns not having rifled barrels or engines looking like they're solid blocks, like pic related. Because of how pieces are molded, to have the various openings/details looking like they should, they need to be cast at a certain position. Thus, 2/3/4 molds are needed.
Budget dictates the detail, not materials.
>He also still fights articulationI think it's only for special cases. His early 00s, late 00s/early 10s, and late 10s toys had 30+ PoA.
