"Funko just admitted it might not survive another year."
(media.scored.co)
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I understand collecting stuff. If I had the space and money I'd probably go nuts collecting old camera equipment. But Funko Pops or Labubus... sorry but I don't get it.
It always felt like shit fake people buy. I’m a resident evil fan because I like resident evil vs I’m a resident evil fan because I own a bunch of stupid toys and I’m going to pile them up on my web cam and talk about how much better ugly bitch RE3 remake Jill is because girl power. And you can’t say I’m not a fan because I have a bunch of ugly low effort toys!
It's like people who have twenty guns they never shoot vs someone who has two.guns they shoot religiously. One likes to shoot guns. The other likes to collect guns.
Guns are the men's version of ladies' shoes.
Funko literally copied what the undergroud scene was doing in the early 00s. Japan of course started the trend of vinyl toys with things like Kubriks, which was born out of their capsule toy culture.
Places like Tower Records would import these, soon mall stores caught on like FYE and Suncoast. Then vinyl toy makers like Kidrobot popped up, leaning on the graffiti scene. Once this hit the mainstream, Funko copied the trend and mass produced toys while securing license after license.
Unlike Lego who responsibly judges the market, Funko flooded stores with its tat, thus the clock was ticking as cool things like real collectibles are not easily found and bought by normies at the local Target. Funko made its money, but it would never last because there isn't and never has been any cool factor to the brand.
As we've seen with comics, you need the nerds to drive sales to normies, else the sales dry up, which means the quality has to be on point, and that's something Funko never even once offered. Funko was always normie bait for fake nerds, the Big Bang Theory of vinyl toys.
You're not a reddit bugman who makes that face that they all do.
😮👉 🎮👈😲
My life is like a video game, trying hard to beat the stage, all the while collecting Funko pops
I collect ancient Roman coins. It's a wild feeling holding an item that's millennia old. These funkos and all the other plastic crap won't last 5% that long.
That’s pretty cool. Where do you find them?
I mostly buy them from old dudes whose children don't want to inherit them. Most of the old dudes got them from Littleton in the nineties or whenever.
We need to inherit Rome.
Bottom of the ocean
Careful of which ones you accept.
Right? What's the fun in collecting things that are made specifically for collecting...and don't even have any additional use?
Like CCG stuff is one thing; it's still predatory, but you can use it in a game you also enjoy. But, yeah, Funko/Labubu...ACTUALLY WTF. It's literally just loot boxes for the sake of loot boxes.
The funny thing is, if the company actually goes out of business: it'll halt production. Thereby introducing scarcity, and in a few decades some of them might actually be worth something. As legitimate collector's items.
I'm still salty about selling my first edition holographic charizards, in pristine condition, for $20 when they were worth nothing.
I don't think that's how Funkos or trading cards work. The moment the company goes out of business they lose all value. Without new products the "community" dies. People don't invest into something that has no future.
The Pokemon card mania and the price inflations started only after Youtubers started hoaxing the thing. They also tried to do the same with NES games.
It would be one thing if they were visually appealing and high quality... but its funkos....
At least you can do SOMETHING with old camera equipment that still works. Build up a photo album of pictures you took with it. Maybe even share them with enthusiasts or people who are just curious.
Oh, no...
Anyway.
Weren't they mogged by Labubu, whatever that might be?
Labubu combines their hideous figurine with a healthy dose of loot box-style gambling for maximum dopamine saturation.
That sounds worse actually.
Funko Pops did that too. You have a chance to get a special rare variant in like 1 in 6 or so. People would buy wholes boxes just for the chance of a rare.
The only value Labubus have provided is content via pissing off Caleb Hammer.
The cost of these things is outrageous. It's a pointless novelty plastic crap from Asia. I don't get it.
Young people spend their money on these things rather than investing in building themselves up.
Young people don't buy them. It was mostly younger Gen X and older millennials that bought them. Might be why they are going out of business now. Not future.
I guess I thought they were a late millenial and Gen Z thing. I knew a whole bunch of Gen Z people once upon a time who bought these things. I grew up with them. I bought tools and text books, they bought funko pops and cosplay gear. I am not joking when I say they spent thousands a year on this stuff
I think it started with late Gen X and went big with late millennials.
I have a funko chewbacca bobblehead doll on my desk I got for free from some work event as a "prize".
Pop culture crowd tends to be a bit older, although I am sure there are Gen Z... Uh, hipsters who buy this crap. But most "western pop culture" is gobbled up increasingly by an ever graying crowd.
What's ironic is that their low price was what got them their initial foot into the market. 10-20$ for a little figure of your favorite character back in the day was a steal compared to the 50$ for a "bargain" one or the 100$+ for a proper.
Like most markets, once people get involved to "invest" and treat it as a collectors thing they intend to flip the price just jumps into the point where it becomes meaningless to anyone else. Its what Pokemon cards or retro games are suffering from right now.
There is a finite amount of retro games. While fuckery has happened to boost the market, at the end of the day they ain't making anymore, so the price is only going to continue to go up. Not saying this is a sound investment, what I am saying is that if you collect, buying now is cheaper than buying later.
While true, there also is the fact that they are outdated, often damaged, and generally not worth much in reality. NBA 2k9 should never be sold for more than a few dollars, for example. Sure something mega rare like Steel Battalion has earned its high price, but a random Pokemon game had tens of millions of copies made which is completely antithetical to the idea that its "limited quantity" is what makes it worth 250$ with no box or manual. Especially with most of them needing new batteries to even function.
They aren't really making retro consoles anymore, but I can still find the majority of mainstream ones in the same Used Games store for 150$ or less, which is below most of their original asking prices too.
I'm not saying you are wrong, but the market has been deliberately poisoned to a point where its completely unfeasible for the average person to even spend. When every single item is now graded and bought with its resale value in mind (and priced accordingly in turn), then it just becomes a game of circle jerking yourself up. And so now every store you go to that deals in Retro Games has shelves lined with games no one will ever buy because any rando who walks in will balk at the price even if they want it, and any collector will look at it and say its too damaged/dirty to justify said price.
You just took the long way round to described why there are limited quantities, though. Corps bought up mass amounts for "grading" so that those entities can boost the price, and many left in the open world are too damaged to be worth much for anyone to collect. This in turn leaves very few for everyone to fight over, thus the prices will continue to go up until all that's left in the used market are the damaged and graded copies.
The majority of the grading started with private collectors and Youtube content creators who basically pulled this entire market out of the ether, which is why it went from "the handful of amazing or cult games" as the big money things to basically everything. They are usually the same guys who bought dozens of copies of rare ones, artificially creating a scarcity to drive up prices. The Corps got into the game late, which is why most of them are failing ventures that rely on social media to boost them up and then shut down anyway.
I didn't disagree that they are limited, that's basic supply and demand. I am pointing out that being limited doesn't always correlate with the price, to a point where we had considerable amounts of time where that same limitation existed and the price went down for most. Them going up to the extreme prices now is an artificial bubble. That's why I used a random NBA game and Pokemon as examples. Pokemon is infinitely less limited in available copies, yet its one of the highest non-cult prices by a long shot. Whereas the NBA game is usually pennies on the dollar, and its a sign of a bad store when they even try to ask 20$ for it.
The supply being limited clearly isn't what is deciding the majority of the price, its the collector's market convincing everyone to treat it as investments instead of products. Much the same as what happened in the housing market.
Because they also believe that it's an investment.
I think the popularization of making Amurguri lines up pretty well with how stupidly priced things like this are.
Almost like public companies that make one novelty product shouldn’t be public companies.
At a certain point it seems like you should be allowed to just pack up shop and go "Welp, it was a good run, cya 'round fellas", drop one last fat dividend to empty the bank float, and ride into the sunset.
Instead of being forced to run a dead company into the ground and produce literally tonnes of useless plastic garbage on the way.
You ARE allowed to. It just needs complete board approval.
Legally it's technically possible, but allowed market wise?
I don't think I know of any publicly traded company that peacefully spun down as circumstances changed instead of chasing line go up until they crashed and burned.
Lol. Beanie babies outlive them?
Still have a plastic tote with 200 something of them. They'll pop off again one day...
Dad has high hundreds of them. Maybe low thousands from covid years. ive been trying to help him sell to declutter his house. lol but only sold like 100 in 1 year. Mostly for 5 to 12 bucks. Mostly selling the ones that have duplicates.
Yeah. If they do somehow pop off again..
I'm curious to see what this does to their collectible market. I occasionally enjoyed watching some videos because that's like watching a horrible accident happen in real time. Looks like they never really recovered from the covid hype spike.
It has always only been a matter of time until Funkos turn into Beanie Babies 2.0.
'bout fucking time.
Nendoroids are the 1000% superior original minifigure that Funkopops copied. It's like the difference between the Saturn V and an African space program. 32 comments and nobody mentioned this yet... are there even any weebs here?
Also lol at Funko drowning in debt after selling one of the most popular goyslop products for a decade straight.
I know about them. Didn't know Funko ripped them off. That's a great comparison, like "We make a product that actually looks like the characters" vs "This is a dysgenic bug man, just like you". Funko Pops are so stupid, they take literally any character and make them soulless with blank eyes and no mouth. I've heard they're at least bobbleheads, but they're just something human soy jaks collect and keep in the box
In my opinion, any similar figure is better. I've heard of YouTooz, which are admittedly quite similar. They're gimmick is that they all have smiles, and are mostly of YouTubers. I have a couple Amiibo I bought for gaming reasons, but they at least have a function
If I had to guess, it's because they ran out of characters to make, and they're products had sold enough for everyone who's interested to have several. I went to a GameStop, and I remember seeing gay pride variations, and Nascar ones weirdly enough. On clearance, since no one wanted either
Hah, funko pop, they had a chance 10 years ago and were on the right track with their vinyl vixen and rock candy line but I guess having good looking female figures is asking too much.
If it's not $300+, anime girl, mixed media, limited production numbered in the triple digits, sellout pre-order on day one, with 6-18 month delay from est delivery date, bunny girl with fishnets...
I don't want it.
I still can't believe this gay product sold to begin with
I was at a collectibles convention and barely anyone was in the Funko Pop section. I didn’t even bother to look
I collect plastic figures myself I don't get pops, they're fucking ugly, the only reason I MAYBE get to buy them is if they're the only/only affordable merch for a series you like, beyond that, fuck no.
Cause theyre shit and they never changed? I’ll admit i have some funkos but their humans are all the same fucking style and it wore thin after a while and they never bothered to come up with a new style
Its sad because I bought the D.Va funko way back in like 2016 when they were still a novelty, and its insanely detailed. Like rivals ones that are in the easy three figures. The only thing "funko" about it is the tiny D.Va inside is in their standard style, with the mech looking nothing like it.
Meaning they absolutely could do some quality stuff, and instead went with "cheap, quick and easy" as their market developed.
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Nature is healing!
These things are nothing but Beanie Babies for soyface trash.
I've been hating on Funko for twenty years. I don't collect Nendoroids but I can appreciate the art style. Funko Pops are just ugly.
its not that great since if an average person buys them they only buy like a couple, usually for a favorite show or character then ignore. the rest rots on shelves. "funko collectors" are probably not too common.
currently, pokemon is eating up all the attention from funko, labubu (failed) and sneakers. but.. even then pokemon will have a lull period where value drops by 50% for a few years. then maybe goes back up 200% after some event.
Surprised they lasted this long. The writing was on the wall when they buried $30 million worth of Pops a few years ago.
The only funko I ever wanted was Little Big Planet's sackboy. But, I could never find one that wasn't dumb as shit.
It also looks pretty bad. ;)
I can make one myself. I'm just very good at procrastination!
Good.
As someone that is just not into that stuff at all, there were maybe ... 5 or 6 in my opinion that looked enough like the thing it was supposed to be, and even then I didn't want to buy those 5 or 6 of them.
I figured they'd be this generation's beanie baby. Or cabbage patch, or care bears, whatever. The value is in you enjoying it, not what you can get out of it montarily in 20 years.
And I just don't like 'em.