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Ray Harryhausen said that he was unable to sell this idea to his Charles Schneer, his production partner.

The Snowman almost saw the light of day when Ray was planning Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger. Instead of Sinbad fighting the giant walrus, he had considered a yeti as the antagonist, but the idea was squashed during a sweatbox session.

A sweatbox session refers to a logistical and technical brainstorm that Ray would carry out with Charles. If a creature could easily be created without using stop-motion, this was preferred in order to save time and money and therefore concentrate on the animation already planned for the story. Harryhausen: The Lost Movies.

Sidebar: I'm confused. Since the scene with the walrus was stop-motion, just how exactly did they save money by not having an animated yeti? All I can think of is that perhaps Sinbad & his men battling the yeti would have meant a more elaborate & complicated scene which would have taken up more screen time than the walrus scene did.

It's a shame they could not have figured out how to do the scene with the yeti instead of the walrus. While the walrus is a beautifully detailed model, the scene lacks any real excitement to it. The walrus isn't truly a menacing creature as it lumbers by the group to get into the sea. You just feel sorry for it.

Now a fierce battle with a sasquatch in the midst of a blinding blizzard would have made for a marvelously suspenseful scene. One moment you see this deadly creature and the next he's vanished into the snowstorm. Where is he going to strike next? It could have been an edge of your seat moment in the movie.

I read that one reason they declined creating the yeti was that it was thought that the film already had too many humanoid creatures in it. They did have the three ghouls, Minoton, and the Troglodyte which were all humanoid. However, would an audience really be opposed to seeing another humanoid creature if it was well designed and animated? And you know that it would have been superbly done by Ray.