Why can't mattel make beards look good?

I like the beards of Legends Austin, Elite Sheamus and the Elite Punk figures.

But yeah Randys beard is really bad.
Too much hair and I don't like the red/brown color.
That's why I passed on this 2-pack.

its because the beard is not part of the head sculpt

I thought so too myself when I saw the bearded randy.

I like the DX two-pack beard, but the Basic 4/WM26 beard is more "natural" looking, I think.

A lot of toy companies have issues with beards. Especially when it is just stubble.

In regards to hair overall, one of the problems is that they don't really texture hair that well. And sometimes they just use one-tone paint apps which always look bad with blonde or light brown hair. This also applies to jeans - straight light blue makes them look very "toy" like. Jakks used to texture jeans and hair very well.

And for beards, scruff looks much different than a beard. So when they just paint a regular tone color for a beard, and they make it thick, it just looks completely off. I imagine this look is harder to pull off in figure form, though. They just have to use lighter colors that aren't too light and aren't too dark or thick.

And in the example picture, another thing that throws it off is that Orton never really had that kind of beard. He had some light half-beard thing going on. That figure just looks like his evil doppelganger, Sandy Orton

I really think, and it not so much Mattels fault as its financially better for them, but unless the beard is sculpted on or has texture, it looks crappy. The simple "Slap some paint on a bare face" just doesnt look good.

To be fair, Orton's beard looked awful in real life.