[Frank Richards]

In my opinion, we entered a golden age of action figures roughly about 15 years ago. Since then, there have been moment of both progress and great decline.

Sculpts, articulation, and character variety have all drastically improved, while quality control has declined. Also, I would probably complain about distribution becoming a problem, but considering we can basically pick up a smart phone, and within days, own whatever figure we're willing to pay for, lol, I won't even open that whole can of worms concerning inconsistent distribution.

At the turn of the century, DC Direct and McFarlane had been giving us amazing sculpts, and then Toy Biz gave us previously unheard of articulation with their Marvel Legends. The bar was raised at that point, and many current figures still have great sculpts along with great articulation.
Sadly, over the past 7 or 8 years, there has been an influx of cheap, poorly sculpted, poorly painted, non-articulated figures. However, despite the influx of crap clogging the toy aisles, there are still some great figures to be found.

However, once we find the figures worth buying, we still have to worry how the paint is going to look, or if the figure is going to break right out of the package. I won't elaborate further, lol, because we all know who the worst culprits are, and they've been mentioned enough already.

I love the fact that there are so many potentially great figures available to us, but I agree that poor quality control has cast a dark shadow over our hobby over the past few years.