pics

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

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

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.

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)_/¯

Ah yes, but in addition to being hideous it’s also expensive and made of plastic! 😬

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

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 ~~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 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.