The Evolution of the WWE Action figure...what's next?

Surprised nobody has mentioned this, but the next big step in action figure evolution will almost certainly be buying a digital sculpt and printing it yourself on a 3D printer. It's still 5-10 years away or more at the moment I'd guess, but this is the way things are heading. Digital sculpts and 3D printing are already in everyday use during the design process at Mattel and other toy companies. It's only a matter of time before they perfect the technologies, bring the prices down to levels affordable to the general public, and work out how to make it work as a business model.

Personally I'm looking forward to it, as it will surely give toy companies a wider variety of options for offering products to customers, and it will allow the individual needs of customers/collectors to be met more precisely.

For example, as it is now, Mattel aren't gonna make a Flashback Gobbledy Gooker, because the costs of physical manufacture and production are considered too high to turn a profit or even break even. But if the customer is paying for the materials for physical production themselves via their 3D printer "plastic cartridges" (or whatever they end up using), all Mattel has to cost is the technical and aesthetic design costs. It may not be feasable for Mattel to make a Gobbledy Gooker in the way we get figures now, but if in the future they can offer digital sculpts to print at home, then the lower revenue needed to turn a profit or break even may make these less-demanded figures more feasable.

Another example is the style, scale and quality of figures. As it stands Mattel offer 6 inch figures in basic articulation style or elite articulation style, which are painted to a fair degree of detail. In future 3D printing at home will likely allow customers a much wider choice. We will be able to choose a smaller or larger scale, more or less articulation points, and a higher or lower level of paint detail. This will allow toy companies like Mattel to more easily cater to a wider variety of customers, for example those who want lower quality/cheaper figures and those who want higher quality/more expensive figures.

No doubt technologies will always improve in terms of what is the highest quality figure possible for any price point. But we're at a point now where the highest quality figures have long left the toy aisles and the kid-aimed price level. Look at Japanese companies like Figma (e.g. their Link figure from Legend Of Zelda) and Figuarts (e.g. their Mighty Morphin Power Rangers figures) to see what I'd consider some examples of the highest quality 6-inch figures available today, and companies like Hot Toys and Big Chief are leading the way in 12-inch. Incredible quality, but very pricey. Even mid-level quality figures, like Masters Of The Universe Classics and DC Universe Classics, while impressive quality with a decent size fanbase, Mattel are really struggling to make the business model work. My point is that we likely won't see any major quality improvement on wrestling figures again until the whole business model changes (which as I said will be most likely be when we start buying digital sculpts to 3D print at home). The only other possibility I guess would be if wrestling had a sudden surge in popularity, which given the state of WWE/TNA at the moment I can't see happening.

How about guys with human like articulation that dosent show (ie the ab crunch on elites) and human like feel. Like their flesh is fleshy, clothes/gear is cloth, etc. As real as it gets

Jakks tried stuff like that ten years ago or so, and it was too creepy to be successful. I think that's a much more futuristic style of figures when it's done right. The technology doesn't exist to produce decent-looking flesh-textured toys at a rate and price that a WWE line needs -- that could be a change a long way down the line, but that's a bigger difference than the leap from Jakks BCA to now. I think we'll see a good six or more evolutions between this point and accurate, articulated, flesh-style figures. And very few wrestlers' outfits are in cloth. Cloth trunks on a Randy Orton, for example, would look a lot worse than the way the figures look now.

I kinda like the thought but
1. Not gonna wanna paint them myself
2. We won't need mattel at all. Any artist could sell downloads of the 3d art file at a fraction of the cost of what people sell customs for because, to your point, after the design there's no labor or expenses.