>>149754781 (OP)
Fairies are in a weird spot where they're too archetypal yet also too undefined. What size is a Fairy? Small [like official in D&D], tiny, child sized, tall / elf size? There's no consensus even with that. Then there's the matter of fairies being too easily confused with "pixies" but also too broadly defined to creatures we'd call Goblins, Gnomes, Sprites and Elves. You can have something be a fairy but then if you break away from the popular image you get too many complaints of it not being fairy-like "enough." Then there's the issue that fairies are far more often antagonists or mischievious tricksters than they are kindhearted protagonists in the vast majority of stories that feature them, but the more popular depictions of fairies in modern age cartoon stories are of them being good (more three godmothers, and Tinkerbell and less so Maleficient and Puck).
You may as well just make your own OC forest creature. You can have your mischievous trickster fairy and have it be bugs bunny or an elf. You can have your tiny magical creature three apples high and call them Smurfs. You can have your elf-like cuckoo Shakespearean "Puck" figure like in Gargoyles. You can have a secret society of tiny dwellers of a hidden forest civilization and just call them Leafmen like in Epic. You don't have to bother calling any of those fairies specifically. You can also have tiny fairies, elfs, and bog creatures of no major difference in stature and do what Strange Magic did.
One more thing is that there's the "girl" stigma to good/kind/magical fairies that is hard to shake. A stigma much of the industry works around for broader appeal, like the princess movies with single word titles (e.g. Tangled or the Aforementioned Epic).
It's not like it's a zero amount either. Tinkerbell is popular, and was in the Disney Princess lineup. There's also Disney movies like Pinocchio/Sleeping Beauty/Cinderella, Fern Gully, Shrek 2, Secret of the Kells, the Fairly Odd Parents....
