When you hear the word “doll”, the first thing that comes to mind is “Barbie”. The main difference between dolls and action figures is that the former are geared towards girls while the latter are geared towards boys. Dolls usually come with matching outfits, while action figures usually come with clothes and accessories that you might not see every day.
Look Barbie. Since her creation in 1959, Barbie has been the quintessential girl’s toy, with its interchangeable clothes, pink cars and variations of the Malibu Beach House. Although the collection later included Ken, of course Ken was by no means an action figure. His clothes, like Barbie’s, were typical everyday clothes, although masculine.
By comparison, his typical “action figure” is muscular, especially to an exaggerated degree, and may include weapons as accessories. Two classic examples that come to mind are Thundercats and GI Joe. The Thundercats characters, while somewhat human-like in appearance, were typically yellow or gray in color, with overgrown muscles; their outfits consisted of tank tops or leggings. Most Thundercats figures, whether male or female, included a weapon; Lion-O, for example, was packaged with The Sword of Omens, a longsword with a fire-red handle.
The GI Joes, while not as muscular as the Thundercats, still looked physically fit and usually included accessories such as machine guns, knives, and grenades. Can you really argue that these weren’t designed for kids? That’s not to say that girls never played with them, but that’s not what the marketing companies had in mind.
Other popular dolls include American Girl and Ashton-Drake, both of which are also geared toward girls. Dolls of this type may be collected by some adults on occasion, due to their realistic appearance and value if kept in good condition.
Another classic action figure collection that may come to mind is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, whose very name suggests action and perhaps violence. Like GI Joe and Thundercats, the Turtles, armor and games with vehicles like tanks and cars full of artillery. Again, although some girls may have found the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles attractive, they were primarily popular with boys. The villains were also warped and mutated, such as the Shredder and his minions Bebop and Rocksteady. Perhaps these figures were meant to appeal to the same kids who liked aggressive competitive sports and war games.
Today’s action figures vary a bit, but again, their overall appearance is pretty much the same. Perhaps, even when times change, people’s mindsets tend to stay the same. The toys produced for boys and girls, for the most part, reflect this.