[ludovicotek]

Honestly, I think that it really comes down more to the characters. You mentioned that the Avatar line, if done differently, could have given Transformers a run for its money. The thing about Transformers is that there are almost countless really cool characters with distinct personalities and character traits. Other properties, like GI Joe, Star Wars and Marvel Universe, have a plethora of really cool characters. In the case of Star Wars, a character that was on screen for a total of 3 seconds gets an action figure, but at least they look cool. I really enjoyed the Avatar movie, but I just don't think that there are that many cool characters. IMO the best character in the entire film was Col. Quaritch, and he was the villain of the movie. Neytiri was a close second. Jake was pretty bland. And all the characters are either human or N'avi. Even if they are different characters, visually, there's not much distinction between them.

I also think that due to Avatar being a film and focusing on the Jake Sully's introduction into the world of Pandora there was not enough room to develop other characters. If they had made an animated series where they introduce and develop more characters and areas of Pandora it would definitely help as well.

I ended up buying the Jake and Neytiri figures and they were surprisingly better than I thought they would be. At first I thought the sculpts and articulation were kind of lacking. But after after holding them in hand and playing around with them I thought Mattel did a great job with them. Not really sure why more people didn't give them more of a chance. I guess we got used to Joes and the Avatar stuff just paled by comparison.