Oh how the mighty have fallen...
Just a little history, McFarlane Toys (as in Todd McFarlane, creator of Spawn) has been around since the mid-90s. They started off producing figures based on Spawn characters, and grew to prominence because no one else was doing what they were doing with toys. This was a time when toys were still viewed as just being for kids, but McFarlane was making toys with the collectors in mind. Their sculpts and paintjobs were on another level, no one else even came close to what McFarlane was doing. Articulation was also not the strong suit of a lot of toys at the time, with the exception of what Beast Wars was doing with balljoints (and probably some other lines I can't recall right now), so McFarlane opted to make their figures miniature statues instead, with few points of articulation in the form of cut joints. McFarlane Toys amassed a huge number of licenses from classic movies (Terminator, Aliens, a lot horror movies), video games (Metal Gear Solid), anime (Akira), and lot of sports, and creating completely original lines (Dragons, Tortured Souls, some other weird shit).
For a time, McFarlane was on top of the world. But things change, Spawn was waning in popularity, NECA was becoming stiff competition, Toybiz and their Marvel Legends showed us that great sculpts and paint jobs in collector friendly packaging didn't have to come at the expense of articulation. McFarlane's immense library of licenses dried up, Spawn toys basically ceased to exist, and they turned to making articulated Halo figures in a "6 inch scale" (closer to something like DC Icons, so smaller than Legends, in reality closer to 5" IIRC) around 2008. Since then they've been doing Walking Dead and Assassin's Creed figures in a similar scale, with articulation, and probably some other stuff that I'm forgetting. Still making sports toys.
Ever since then they've sort been a shadow of their former self, unable to keep up with the shifting marketplace and the wants and demands of the modern action figure collector. Recently, they've almost entirely abandoned their former scale, and have started making larger 7" inch figures in their "Color Tops" line. Similar to their older stuff, they have a larger emphasis on better sculpts, with little to no usable articulation (they have these awful cut joints that are good for nothing). Each Color Tops figure has a plain black base instead of the varying diorama bases that they used to include with their older stuff. I don't really know what demographic the Color Tops line is for. 7" scale NECA collectors are accustomed to great sculpts and articulation now, fans of their 6" scale have been left out to dry, the collectors of the old style of McFarlane figures have moved on. They've lost the Halo license to Mattel before even completing Blue Team and Fireteam Osiris from Halo 5, so die hard collectors for that line are faced with starting over. It's a bit sad really.
All written from memory, sorry if I got a few details wrong, probably left out a bunch of stuff but this post is long enough as it is.
