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. 🙂

The dodgy western knock off of nendoroids

Thank you, I utterly despise those things. The most blatantly cynical corporate cash-in on nerd nostalgia.

I’ve got only one, it’s in my PC, and it’s not a ‘proper’ funko

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’m a Halo hoarder collector, 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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Yeah, like seriously, how are they pricing those lego bricks?

Sure looks like it.

There’s no room for treasure, it’s too full of funko pops.