It’s especially frustrating because yeah, as you said, there are other toys out there right now doing variety perfectly fine! There’s even ones out there right now that still have characters who get rereleases but are still constantly introducing new characters! Even though it’s pretty much dead now, Monster High was really good at this. It had its set of characters who were the main characters and would thus receive the most dolls, but even then, there were still a whole bunch of other characters regularly coming out alongside them! And even with the main characters getting many different dolls, the dolls were all pretty different from one another despite being the same character. Of course, that would probably be more difficult to pull off with MLP, in terms of releases of the same characters looking really different from one another.
For an example from a toyline that’s still going on, Shopkins’ line of Shoppies dolls. There’s characters who do get more releases, but just like how MH was, they still constantly put out new ones. Other companies are doing this just fine so it’s honestly baffling how Hasbro is unable to with MLP anymore. Other toy companies are very much capable of having main characters or characters who receive more releases, while still having a wide variety in characters. It does feel like the only reason Hasbro isn’t doing it is to save as much money and possible. They’re just being cheap, I’m pretty sure. And it’s frustrating. Hopefully G5 will be better, but Hasbro’s been pulling this since G3′s Core 7. :/