Kevin Smith and Paul Dini, two giants in the comic book cartoon industry, pointed out a disturbing preference that executives have:

• Television shows that appeal to girls are pressured to expand their young male audience because boys are more likely to spend money on merchandise.
• This creates a tendency towards goofy and random humour.
• It also creates a self-fulfilling prophecy where girls don’t watch comic book cartoons on TV because they’re not geared towards them, further causing such shows to focus on boys.
• Smith, for his part, feels that girls may not buy action figures but they may buy other accessories such as character clothing. Executives are merely failing to do their jobs in identifying markets.

Read more about the phenomenon here.

Source: io9