Speaking as a
hoardercollector of many strange things, I still can’t comprehend the appeal of Funko Pops. Even if you’re super into whatever franchise the model in question is from, surely there is a better way to express it than by way of deformed simulacra with dead, soulless eyes. Just saying.Thank you, I utterly despise those things. The most blatantly cynical corporate cash-in on nerd nostalgia.
Soulless mass-produced slob. The AI of the figurine world if you will. The Corporate Memphis of the physical world.
A student gifted me a Funko Pop at the end of the last school year. She designed it on their website to look like me, holding a game controller and complete with my signature long hair and fun button-up shirt. I thought that was a very cool gift. 🙂
Anything that someone personalized for you is cool by definition. But, every generic marvel or wharever funko pop is trash.
Oh absolutely. I see the limited edition ones at cons and can only think of the exclusive Beanie Babies that people used to go nuts over. Like who gives a fuck srsly.
Let people enjoy things? Lol
Saying something sucks in a general conversation isn’t not letting people enjoy things. Going up to someone with Funko pops and telling them how much they suck would be not letting people enjoy things. What you’re asking for is no criticism of a brand ever.
Well when you say it like that it makes a lot of sense, carry on with my apologies
Definitely, I would cherish that forever. But overall Funko Pops are so unbelievably dumb. I mean I still have some pogs somewhere, but I was 10 and they were cheap cardboard.
Tbf, Pogs is a game and we often played for keeps, to me that puts it in a different category than funko pops. You need to collect just “more” to pad your losses (unless you’re killing it, but taken pogs are trophies), and they didn’t make them “plain,” so you might as well get the ones you like more than the ones you don’t.
At my elementary school we hardly ever played the game, we just had tubes or binders of them and traded. I remember some kids had slammers that were like ninja stars and I definitely wouldn’t play with them because they would destroy the pogs.
Pogs were on a different level
I still have my tubes of pogs. I even have a few “OJ in the slammer” slammers.
One of the most bizarre gifts I’ve ever been given was a random Skyrim funko pop. I don’t really do collectibles, and I hadn’t played Skyrim in a couple years at that point.
Then I found out that the person who gave it to me has a massive collection of Funkos. They can’t even display all of them because they’re stacked several layers deep all the way to the ceiling
You know how gacha games exploit the same psychology as gambling addiction? I’m convinced Funko pops are like that, but for hoarding. I don’t know what it is about the brand, but you so rarely see people with just a small collection of them. It’s either none or 500.
Funko pops are the modern lawn flamingo or garden gnome. They’re tainted things, too corporate to be kitschy, and far too uninteresting to be worth calling a knickknack. I instantly judge anyone who owns one for their future contribution to a far-off landfill.
I put my foot in my mouth once, because my sister had gotten me one. I held onto it for a bit but got rid of it, forgot she had given it to me, and at some point voiced how they’re just garbage 😅
As someone who essentially uses their mouth as a shoe, I feel your pain. Bright side, you won’t receive any more garbage of that specific variety!
They really are extremely tacky.
Wait… I know that username!
I own one. It’s the Blue Meanie from Yellow Submarine. I saw it at Barnes and Noble and thought it was cute so I got it.
I don’t really get why people would collect tons of these things, but I didn’t understand baseball cards or beanie babies either. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I’ve got only one, it’s in my PC, and it’s not a ‘proper’ funko
Ah yes, but in addition to being hideous it’s also expensive and made of plastic! 😬
The appeal is pretty easy. You can collect items from any fandom you can think of and have the style of the figures match each other almost perfectly and look ‘natural’ together. The style chosen has a lot of detractors, but even some that don’t necessarily appreciate it are willing to compromise if it lets them make a little action scene of thor fighting vegeta.
That’s me, I’m the one who compromised.
I’m a Halo
hoardercollector, and I think I only have 4 of those ugly Pop vinyls. They’re all Halo ones but they don’t have the dark soulless beady little eyes the rest of them do. Two of them were gifts anyway so I didn’t give them much money.They’re ugly and tacky to me.
The dodgy western knock off of nendoroids
It’s mostly the design of the fucking things, I’m sure they’d be more acceptable of they were at least appealing.
(I’m going to be extremely hypocritical here as I do this with my Amiibo) but the culture or keeping it in the boxes never really made sense to me in regards to Funko. What purpose does it really serve when there’s a lot of Funko that have little to no value boxed or not? Part of me thinks it’s because they’re easier to store in the boxes and because you don’t actively play or use them (like you would with Amiibo.) But what gets me is the # of Funko collectors that open their figures is microscopic compared to the people who have entire walls lined with boxes of the things.
Another brand I see them compared to often is Nendoroids, which are less TV and movie characters and more anime and video game figures. But very few people keep those boxed, because they’re pose-able, therefore more owners purchase them with the intention of displaying them in a variety of poses as opposed to keeping the boxes for anything other than storing the accessories.
The appeal is $$$. I know someone who collects those. I thought they were stupid until he needed some extra money and took one of his hundreds of bobbleheads, put it on Craigslist, and had $750 more the next day than before he sold it. This was a long time ago too, so it was probably $1300 worth of today’s money.
Ah same appeal as beanie babies when you could do that with them on eBay.
But there’s so much LEGO there! D:
But screw the funko pops. Never saw the point of them. You can’t do anything with it than put it somewhere, and they aren’t made in a particularly high quality either.
Can’t really do anything with the super high detailed figurines of Solid Snake and the like, either. They’re just decorations. But those good ones are hundreds of dollars. A Funko pop is, what? $6-10? If you don’t think they’re ugly as shit like I do, I could see why they would sell.
Huh, so their price dropped. Over here in Denmark they costed almost as much as a full price game at one point. Bought a couple as a Christmas present one time, which was many years ago.
I’ve bought cheaper toys with better quality. I’m not talking about their style or design, but more like areas of slightly misaligned printing, parts here and there where pigment/colour bleeds into each other, parts glued on with too much glue. They certainly are a quantity over quality product.
Over here in Denmark they costed almost as much as a full price game at one point
That sounds insane… They’re mass produced vinyl and plastic bullshit lol
Excuse me sir, Lego is never irrelevant. My wife had to stop me from buying more cause I got about two Rubbermaid full of pieces and figures. I use them to make scenes for the season or holidays
Seriously. Lego will be played with even when I’m a old boomer in 2070s yelling about our AI president and being against human-bot marriage.
Don’t know about funkopops. They look like beanie babies to me.
Lego is great for the elderly as well. And patients suffering from Alzheimer’s. So yeah I’m gonna be in a retirement home doing Lego and playing video games
Me too. See you there.
Why would you be against human-robot marriage? What do you have against the robosexuals?
Oldie, but goodie:
For the uninitiated: you’re looking at a court divorce in progress, where these two fascinating individuals are splitting the perceived value of their combined Beanie Babies collection.
I’m gonna tell my kids this is how we used to play Pokemon before video games exist.
Wonder how that all worked out in the end?
Nov 5, 1999, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA: Attorney Frank Totti looks over papers while his client Frances Mountain sorts out Beanie Babies with her ex-husband Harold Mountain in Judge Gerald Hardcastle’s Family Courtroom in Las Vegas November 5. The couple, who were divorced four months ago, were ordered to divide up the collection valued at $2,500 to $5000 but were unable to do so by themselves. The collection was ordered spread on the court floor and divided up one by one under the supervision of Family Court Judge Hardcastle.
In the end their collections were worth exactly the same
Besides depreciation, I can’t help but feel this whole experience rendered them emotionally worthless.
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desart. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
No thing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
I mean I get your title, but it really seems like you’re at a thrift shop.
Speaking of, those Legos would be coming home with me.
Yeah, legos might have some kits that are themed based on fads but the underlying concept is timeless and they are made to last.
I spy some good pieces in there as well. I’d certainly be digging through that bin.
All Bionicle pieces would be mine
I gave my entire collection of Lego to my friend’s kid. Pretty decent amount. But those two green flat boards there on top? I want them even now.
I was wondering how much. Do I fill a bag for $3 or something?
The whole point was to put this in your cubicle so you could pretend you had a personality that was more than being a cog in the machine. Then the pandemic happened.
Seeing this reminds of a very shameful period in my life.
lego blocks will never be irrelevant!
Yeah, like seriously, how are they pricing those lego bricks?
Based on the fact that they have used hot wheels for full retail price, there is a reason the Lego bin is still full.
I’d totally buy Lego bricks by the pound.
Many Lego stores have what they call the “Pick-a-Brick” wall, big bins of loose bricks in various shapes and colors. While it’s not priced by weight, there is a flat price for anything you can cram into a provided container. Most stores are very liberal about what you’re allowed to do to fit bricks into the container, too.
Stupid fad can’t die fast enough
Those Pop figures sure do look alike when you take them out of their packaging. I can’t really tell what any of them are supposed to be at a glance.
Prime tat.
We were born of stardust, and to stardust we will return
*microplastics
McKay’s?
Sure looks like it.
That’s what I thought as well! Not the Knoxville one. Must be one of the other locations.
Loose Pops! Sounds like the name of a discount chiropractor
We were fairly into these maybe 8 years ago or so. My biggest gripe are the bobble head ones. They’re so much shittier. And all of the Star Wars ones are bobble heads.
The most recent one I got was from my friend who hates them who I got one for as a joke a few years back. He liked Nightmare Before Christmas a lot as a kid. I found one that was Oogie Boogie with the sack off, so just the bugs. It was pretty unique and interesting. I’m sure he probably trashed it at some point or has it in a closet. He got me one of Laura Palmer from Twin peaks on a body bag. I never keep mine in boxes, I think it’s too weird, but I kept this one in the box because I don’t think anyone would recognize it otherwise.
Am I open to getting more? Eh, maybe. They need to be pretty unique for me to even think about it though. It’s pretty cringe to have them now lol. Plus, we had a real problem of people just getting us a bunch of them because they knew we collected some. People finally stopped, but ik scared it could start again if we get new ones.
