[thewriteguy]

I personally find it baffling that 6" apparently sell well. If more collectors bought 4", then there would be more 4" figures... right?

I don't know, perhaps there's more to it than that. Maybe the 6" format is more profitable, though not necessarily popular, for the toy companies. Since they are larger, they can be sold for more than 4", and oil prices are really low now, so the raw plastic material costs could be low now, too.

Additionally, maybe kids (boys) just don't care for playing with 4" figures. So you have adult collectors, but many of us gripe about the lack of POA (but the sculpting details are far better nowadays). So maybe the toy companies find it a losing, thankless proposition to sell 4" to finicky adult collectors. From this perspective, I could see it as not worth the trouble for them: the profit margins are lower, and the buyers complain. (And if the figures have more than 5 POA, maintaining consistent quality -- preventing breakage -- becomes more of an issue, which contributes further to smaller profit margins.)

I wonder if Hasbro only continues to offer Star Wars in 4" for the sake of tradition. Otherwise, it wouldn't have surprised me if they had ditched 4" entirely for 6" collectibles for adults, large-sized plastic dolls for boys, and those little cartoony-style figures and spaceship sets for toddlers. It looks like they are going this way for future Marvel movies.