About the figure numbers - youre right, it is in fact a sizeable black hole. I tried really hard to track down some sources, found old magazine articles and most sources focused on Red Data, Tom Riker or Esoqq as rare or shortpacked figures. Sources varied (but not by much) in terms of quantities for those figures. But for the TNG wave 1 & 2 figures? No idea. I resorted to asking various facebook communities for the highest numbered figures they had and it topped out at about 300,000 for some figures (which explains why so many mint in packet samples are still on the market decades later)
As for later on, I was able to find magazine interviews with Chris Overley where he stated that the warp factor figures would be produced about 10,000 per figure. Anecdotally, this sort of tracks with what I see on ebay every day. The later waves do seem to be under-represented (but of course, as your posts often point out this can be driven by "market forces" like new shows, the return of older characters like Picard, etc)