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Like others have said, it's the stores that make the call. Their enormous buying power gives them a lot of say in what gets made and what does not. They want items at certain price points, and with plastic costs going up (because of oil) and tooling, etc. in order to create a product at the lower price point, they have to cut down on the amount of cost they put into it. Simple as that.
Think about the fact that everybody in the supply chain is trying to make a profit off of every figure produced and every point of articulation is more tooling, more hours of pay for sculptors and engineers, more plastic, more paint apps, more parts that can get swallowed by kids and thus more safety testing, etc, etc.
