Funko nearing bankruptcy

I’m torn on Mondo. They do make some nice stuff but boy are they overpriced for what they are. I can see why Funko bought them. Most of my Mondo purchases I’ve regretted because it was just not something of quality that met the price. Their 12” and 6” animated figures should be half what they’re asking for them.
 
Buttmunch said:
I’m torn on Mondo. They do make some nice stuff but boy are they overpriced for what they are. I can see why Funko bought them. Most of my Mondo purchases I’ve regretted because it was just not something of quality that met the price. Their 12” and 6” animated figures should be half what they’re asking for them.
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I feel exactly the same. The figure are cool but overpriced
 
joshsquash729 said:
Agreed on this one. Which was a bit fun at first- walking into a store and seeing one you didn't even know existed. But then they took that to another level with the Funko Store exclusives, so they'd either show something on the back of the box that the average Joe wouldn't know was only available on Funko's site and they'd never find it, or they wouldn't put it on the back of the box, and it would sit and rot on Funko's site because nobody knew it was there other than the super hardcore fans. With a lot of releases nowadays, they don't even show the other figures on the back of the box.

Having some sort of retro cross-sell type on the back of the box showing not only all the other figures, but where to get them, would be best. They already do that when they reveal product online- show the logo of wherever it's exclusive to, so doing so on the packaging would only make sense. Not everyone is chronically online, or follows Funko-related pages.
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THIS!! When they announced the new Firefly Funkos I got really excited because the whole cast was finally coming! Then I could only find info on seven of the nine characters. Turns out the other two were exclusive to Funko's website (or something) which made me just say fuck it to the whole line. That, and the fun Crazy Hair Book variant is a chase, I just don't need any of it.

Removing information on other releases from the back of the box has always struck me as shooting your company in the foot. In-hand marketing is perhaps more valuable than online. It's instantly aspirational.

I'll miss the offbeat releases whenever they stop producing. I'll keep Romy & Michele forever (because they made frickin' Romy and Michele!!!!!) and I really like that they made Wicked's Magical Wise Women so I can have Idina and Kristin in my collection (Kristin should be smaller, especially since every sculpt is unique). I'd always prefer action figures over Pops, but right now Funko is the only way to have Wiccan in my collection, along with Robin Sparkles, Winifred Sanderson, Miranda Priestly and Jack & Rose.
 
Damien said:
Good.
Funko is an absolute blight on the collecting space. They took literally everything wrong with modern collecting and distilled it into a single product that you now can't fucking escape from. Worthless junk piled up in every goddamn store, cluttering up every e-tailer interface. Fuck 'em. May their collapse be so devastating that the terror it creates echoes across the next 10 generations of worthless executive vultures.
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Yeah, I'm pretty much here. Funko is the big budget version of the artist alley guys who do the "wall of faces" prints. Low-effort product that relies on cluster bombing your nostalgia. None of it is good, but hey at least there's a shit-ton of it. They've got every version of every character from every franchise for the last 70 years, so it overwhelms people into a familiarity coma.

Funko is one of the few toy things I'm just sort of irrationally caustic about. I'm always sad for folks losing their jobs, but hopefully those folks will travel on to better companies.
 
JakeEkiss said:
Funko is one of the few toy things I'm just sort of irrationally caustic about.
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This is me. I actively fucking HATE Funko POPs. Just the sight of them literally makes me angry. Like I said above; to me they're just a physical manifestation of everything bad about our hobby, other collectors, and the people that use our nostalgia and collecting to get our money. Everything bad associated with what brings us all to this forum is distilled in a POP figure and Funko, as a company, can fuck off and die in a fire. Metaphorically.
 
Wow. I had no idea that so many people shared my view on Funko POPS. I really dislike that they are EVERYWHERE. So many people have bought into the hype. Tables full of them at flea markets. See a tall display at a toy/comic show and get excited to browse some action figures, but it is an insane amount of POPS. I can't buy them, because they don't look good on a shelf with anything that I collect.
They are a waste of space and resources. But, just my opinion.
 
I own two.

I was gifted Eliot Reid from some old hospital friends, and I got Rain from Alien Romulus just because I was high on the movie at the moment.

It is true that they just don't go anywhere. I cannot find a place that they just look like they belong.
 
I think there's only two Pops in my house, both my brother's, both tremendous entertainers and showmen: Macho Man Randy Savage and Elton John. The closest I came to buying one was Storm at TRU. I think it was the punk version, iirc.
 
I don't think they blend in with anything but themselves, but neither do bobbleheads, or Mego figures, or minifigs (Legos/Miminates/Palz/Kubricks) or gaming miniatures, or toy soldiers - they all really only work with each other.

For me that's a strength - adds variety if one shelf or cubicle or section is a different style than the next shelf. But I've never wanted Kirk, Vader, Batman and Indiana Jones interacting so if those are all different styles/scales/type of figures or toys that is fine by me.
 
I think I have 9. Three were gifts from family and the other 6 are the only ones I intentionally bought - the characters from the board game Clue. Why Hasbro hasn’t made proper figures of them by now baffles me! Even with just those 6 I think two of them were exclusives to Hot Topic and Target, with again, no mention of that on the back of the package. If you’re looking to buy the clue characters, there’s a a good chance you want them all and there are probably plenty of people out there with just 4 or 5 not knowing how to complete the set. Baffling choices.
 
As someone who was hard into the sofubi scene 15 years ago, Funko's Pops always felt like an unwelcome corporate push into indie toy territory so they could homogenize it for the masses, like Hot Topic did with band shirts. Now most kids own a couple of band shirts just for the aesthetics and Pops are the first thing people think of when you mention soft vinyl toys. It would've made me angry when I was younger, but now it just makes me sad.
 
Schizm said:
THIS!! When they announced the new Firefly Funkos I got really excited because the whole cast was finally coming! Then I could only find info on seven of the nine characters. Turns out the other two were exclusive to Funko's website (or something) which made me just say fuck it to the whole line. That, and the fun Crazy Hair Book variant is a chase, I just don't need any of it.

Removing information on other releases from the back of the box has always struck me as shooting your company in the foot. In-hand marketing is perhaps more valuable than online. It's instantly aspirational.

I'll miss the offbeat releases whenever they stop producing. I'll keep Romy & Michele forever (because they made frickin' Romy and Michele!!!!!) and I really like that they made Wicked's Magical Wise Women so I can have Idina and Kristin in my collection (Kristin should be smaller, especially since every sculpt is unique). I'd always prefer action figures over Pops, but right now Funko is the only way to have Wiccan in my collection, along with Robin Sparkles, Winifred Sanderson, Miranda Priestly and Jack & Rose.
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Don't even get me started on that Firefly line. FINALLY it looks like someone is doing the entire cast at once, and it's hard to get 2 of them. Of course. I felt the same way about the Galaxy Quest Pops- people have been asking for Galaxy Quest figures for ages, and someone finally makes them, but odd character choices, so we end up missing one of the main characters in favor of an (albeit fun- it's Tony Shalhoub, for goodness' sake), side character who didn't sell well, and it seems that line is done even before all this financial stuff. They used to be really great on completing teams and such
 
Like most here, I don’t think anything of value will be lost by the demise of Pops. The vast majority of which I find pointless. If you like them - cool, I won’t yuck your yum. I have a few that I felt worked with the Pop aesthetic enough to get me to bite - Grinch, Rocko, a Winnie the Pooh. I thought their Pop offshoot Dorbs was better, but I don’t think it took off. And their Disney Afternoon line was pretty solid, it’s too bad they couldn’t exist in that space.

My chief concern is Mondo. Yes, they’re overpriced, but I like them and want to finish my X-Men collection. I get the impression that Mondo is doing fine so it likely has value and wouldn’t necessarily be impacted if Funko goes under, but sold off. That could certainly lead to challenges if the entity that buys it makes a bunch of changes, but now I assume it’s BAU for Mondo for the foreseeable future.
 
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