I was wondering... why is it that fantasy races are so overdone? Why is popular fantasy so restricted, so limited to Tolkienesque races?

So, I got to thinking... we've got supernatural races, with gods, demigods, angels, demons, vampires, werewolves... we've got the popular cat people, the rare dog people, lizard people, snake people... and then all of the Tolkien races.

Now... you can make a fantasy race out of anything... but it becomes difficult to do if you want your race to remain attractive. In dealing with the female specifically, you can put long canines on her, and she is still attractive, or long, pointed ears, but what else? You can add cat fur or maybe a Siberian husky-style head, but that's pretty much it. I can't really think of any other fantasy races that could still be attractive in direct relevance to their females.

Do you know of any obscure or unique fantasy races? Attractive ones? Ideas? Pictures?

There is the Darkspawn from DA:O and they were pretty unique.
Gnolls are what I consider mid-popular. They is some hyenapeople things.
Those blue alien things that start with a d are unique because they are aliens.
Ima try and think of some more. And I can't link pics because I'm on mobile.

The Noegyth Nibin or "Petty Dwarves" from Tolkien's Legendarium are about as obscure as it gets.

That was exactly what I wasn't looking for. lol

Edit: And they need to be attractive.

Lamia aren't used that much in video games, we could use more of them.

Kender. From Dragonlance. Essentially a halfling meets pixie type of deal except quite a bit different. They are filled with this thing called wanderlust and usually have absolutely no fear of anything. There is a common saying in the Dragonlance universe. The las thing you want to hear is a Kender say "Oops..."

I thought it was "I'm bored".

Lol that's kind of why I mentioned it. They are pretty obscure as far as Tolkien goes (besides, few people even read Tolkien nowdays anyhow).

Screw attractiveness.

Is it? Probably is both. Either one would be something scary to her coming from a kender. I can imagine Raistlin having nightmares about Tasslehoff saying, "Hmmm...I'm bored what does this do Raist?"

I loved the book series Chronicle of Chaos by John Wright because he uses obscure mythological races (like nymphs and lamia and sirens and hetacronshire, etc). It's a great book trilogy that combines science-fiction, fantasy, and mythology into a pretty interesting story line. That's the first thought that came into my mind when thinking of unique fantasy races.