I tend to think that action figures are a trend in itself. The companies are always trying to get of-age kids into their product. I feel that it's possible to over-saturate the market with too many action figures where kids won't know what they really want or like.

I do disagree about the cartoon thing. I believe that any toy figure line needs visual support on the tv and it's not done with just ads. As already said, the SW Clone Wars line is doing quite well mainly because kids can watch it at a decent hour. Even Transformers had their animated show and that stuff was flying off the shelves here. To an extent, it still is. For GI Joe to continue, it needs a tv show. Sigma6 prolly ONLY sold well because of that aspect. THe moment the cartoon was pulled and the toyline not only stopped, but got pretty weird and stupid.

There might be a connection between video games and toys. The HALO figures seems to sell pretty well. I'm sure if actual effort went into a GI Joe game, maybe the kids would want to play with the actual toys or at least, just have them around looking cool?

The oil thing is an interesting idea. If and when we run out, who knows what the real future of lil plastic toys will be.