The bet uses of it I've seen have been related to projects where aesthetics didn't matter much. ex. I know a student who used it to prototype chassis for a robo

The bet uses of it I've seen have been related to projects where aesthetics didn't matter much. ex. I know a student who used it to prototype chassis for a robotics class. The MakerBot let him quickly and cheaply iterate his design and the final finish didn't really matter. You are right that the action figure market has nothing to fear in the short term.