# Was The Powerpuff Girls EVER that great? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** cartoons-animation\ **Created:** [March 25, 2025, 2:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-powerpuff-girls-ever-that-great/1016069 "2025-03-25T02:43:50Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Atamasama](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/atamasama/32/12961_2.png) [@Atamasama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atamasama)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2025, 11:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-powerpuff-girls-ever-that-great/1016069/61 "2025-04-01T23:22:23Z")
When I was little there were a disproportionate number of girls in my neighborhood, and so I had a lot of female friends because that’s who was available to play with. I’d go to their houses and they’d have Barbies or other “girl dolls” that they played with. Me being a boy, I had the Barbie dolls doing karate or whatever because that’s how I played. Whether or not it’s an action figure depends on how you play with it. Or when my daughter puts her Cyborg action figure in a doll bed in her doll house because he’s “home sick”, that thing is a doll. ---
**Author:** ![DigitalC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ebca7d/32.png) [@DigitalC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DigitalC)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2025, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-powerpuff-girls-ever-that-great/1016069/62 "2025-04-01T23:26:51Z")
Yeah, It’s really a lot more about how you play with it than what your gender is. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2025, 11:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-powerpuff-girls-ever-that-great/1016069/63 "2025-04-01T23:37:40Z")
And then there was [Toy Biz, Inc. v. United States](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toy_Biz,_Inc._v._United_States), where Toy Biz argued that their products were action figures, not dolls, on account of the X-Men not being humans. (Marvel, contrary to what Reddit seems to think, filed an amicus curae brief disagreeing with this position.) ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2025, 12:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-powerpuff-girls-ever-that-great/1016069/64 "2025-04-02T00:06:41Z")
> [@Odesio](#): > > didn’t start buying GI Joe until the 1980s when they introduced the 3.75 inch dolls action figures Did you begin buying before Swivel-Arm Battle Grip® or after Swivel-Arm Battle Grip®? Because my collecting didn’t start until after arms were fully battle-ready (but I somehow ended up with at least one figure I remember with primitive, non-swiveling arms). ---
**Author:** ![echoreply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/echoreply/32/3641_2.png) [@echoreply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/echoreply)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2025, 5:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-powerpuff-girls-ever-that-great/1016069/65 "2025-04-02T05:08:17Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > often, the line between an “action figure” and a “doll” seems to just be whether girls are buying it My daughter hated dolls, but loved to make clothes and play house or school with action figures. So Optimus Prime might be teaching a class to Stormtroopers, all dressed in little hand made outfits. Same kid was really into Transformers about 5 years ago (and now they’re back into it for some reason). We started around _Transformers: Prime_, and they are far better than the old ones. I downloaded a bunch of the original series, and they were unwatchable for both of us. I still think the next live action movie should be _Rescue Bots_, but only if they get LeVar Burton to play the scientist. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2025, 3:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-powerpuff-girls-ever-that-great/1016069/66 "2025-04-02T15:27:05Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > I think the idea was that girls buy different toys than boys - so if you’ve got a show that appeals to boys and girls, and you want to fully monetize your audience, you need to make two distinct toy lines, each of which will only sell half as well as a toy line connected to a property that only has male or only has female fans. I think that’s an accurate understanding. But … There’s the same number of boys and girls out there. If there’s e.g. 100K of each kind, you either make 2 lines of toys in 100K volume each, and one sex-neutral show good enough to attract all 200K kids, or you make the same two toy lines and make two sex-specific shows each good enough to attract the matching 100K kids. Decent bet the “two toys one show” approach is the cheaper one. Ideally you could create a sex-neutral show _and_ a line of sex-neutral toys and sell all to 200K kids. Even so, from any given line of themed toys, I’d still bet that armed with detailed sales knowledge you’d find a significant sex bias in which kids buy which items from the total line-up. Think Wonder Woman and Spiderman team up as equals to fight evil together. Good bet the girls buy a lot more WW than spidey, and the boys do the opposite. ---
**Author:** ![DigitalC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ebca7d/32.png) [@DigitalC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DigitalC)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2025, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-powerpuff-girls-ever-that-great/1016069/67 "2025-04-02T20:53:34Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > Ideally you could create a sex-neutral show _and_ a line of sex-neutral toys and sell all to 200K kids. At this point I believe toy and animation companies have no clue what they are doing. Toy aisles at my local Target and Wal-Mart are still packed full of Lightyear merchandise, a movie that came out and BOMBED in 2022. This things were being clearanced out a week after the movie came out, and they are still around today. Everything from cheap dollar store crap to [Hot Toys](https://www.bigbadtoystore.com/Product/VariationDetails/209643?o=4). They really have no clue what is going to be a hit or not, they are just throwing stuff at the wall. It doesn’t surprise me that they got the audience for Teen Titans completely wrong. ---
**Author:** ![Odesio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/odesio/32/20003_2.png) [@Odesio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odesio)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2025, 9:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-powerpuff-girls-ever-that-great/1016069/68 "2025-04-02T21:40:29Z")
> [@DigitalC](#): > > At this point I believe toy and animation companies have no clue what they are doing. Toy aisles at my local Target and Wal-Mart are still packed full of Lightyear merchandise, a movie that came out and BOMBED in 2022. There is a glut of Marvel and Disney toys on the market and retailers are having difficulty moving them off shelves. If you go to one of those outlet stores like Ollie’s or Big Lots (before Big Lots went out of business) you’ll find a lot of those licensed toys at low prices. The truth is nobody really knows what’s going to be the next big thing, not even Hollywood producers or the fine folks at Hasbro or Mattel. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles hit it big in 1987, and who would have expected them to be around almost 40 years later? ---
**Author:** ![DigitalC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ebca7d/32.png) [@DigitalC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DigitalC)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2025, 9:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-powerpuff-girls-ever-that-great/1016069/69 "2025-04-02T21:49:20Z")
> [@Odesio](#): > > The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles hit it big in 1987, and who would have expected them to be around almost 40 years later? Same as Transformers, GI Joe, He-Man, Ghostbusters, and most other 80s toys that are now coasting on grown up nostalgia. I’m surprised Thundercats are actually gone. ---
**Author:** ![WolfpackJeep](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpackjeep/32/2921_2.png) [@WolfpackJeep](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WolfpackJeep)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2025, 7:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-powerpuff-girls-ever-that-great/1016069/70 "2025-04-04T07:53:00Z")
> [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#): > > What was PPG selling? Keychains! I still have a Buttercup keychain that I bought at a touristy little place in Portland, ME when I was in high school. I think there was a cereal, too. > [@DKW](#): > > _How_ is the 2016 series so much worse? _How_ did it completely butcher the characters? I didn’t watch enough of the 2016 series to answer that, but I do remember there being a major outcry at the lack of Ms. Bellum (who had clearly always been the real mayor of Townsville!). Personally, I couldn’t get past the voices, particularly the lack of Tara Strong. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-powerpuff-girls-ever-that-great/1016069.md?page=3)