Finally someone who hates funko pops for the same reason I do! I have owned one before, mostly because it was a gift. I’m a nerd and I understand the nerd impulse to buy stuff that displays our tastes. However, I’ve always felt that pops are a shallow cash grab. I’m not a capitalist for this reason. Under capitalism, you’ll always throw stuff away instead of giving it away due to the laws of supply and demand. Before I get dragged by a libertarian type, I’m not against people who open their own businesses. But I think that the current system is highly exploitative and wasteful, and stuff like beanie babies and funko pops illustrate some of the problems that concern me.
0:00 Intro/Tommy video postmortem 1:50 E3 cancelled 5:05 Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom trailer 7:17 Mario Kart 8 discussion 8:43 E3 cancelled 12:15 Nintendo Live 2023 in September 15:30 Funko Pop landfill 31:45 ultimatenintendo plug 33:17 SoCal Gaming Expo plug/Larry Bundy challenge 34:51 Khan the Musical 37:13 Indie game review codes 38:38 WWE purchase 48:37 Illicit counterfeit SNES Minis 53:49 The Completionist/Jirard bought every 3DS and WiiU eShop game 1:00:23 Preserved Play plug 1:01:20 giant Donkey Kong arcade cabinet
This is entirely my assumption, but I'm starting to think that a promised weekly podcast might have been a bit overwhelming to keep up. So instead, they just drop them when they can. Less frequently for them, more frequently than we thought. Just a guess, though.
Ian and Pat both seem happier in these, too. I think their allowing themselves to set their own pace is good for the product as well as for their mental health.
25k views and less than 1k likes? Come on, people. So happy we're still getting episodes here and there! Rochester/Buffalo native here too, thanks for the mention of Strong Museum of Play.
The amount of large companies that lease/rent their storage in America instead of putting money into their own facilities is very high. Our shipping infrastructure is in shambles right now due to how few places we have to rely on to ship so many companies products.
Beanie Babies are still being sold… while the market definitely collapsed, big time, there is a market for cute toys. Collecting just to collect is silly for lots of reasons, but Funko pops will be around many years from now - people like collectibles based on cultural things that we like (Star Wars, etc). The market will shrink (probably a lot), but it won’t completely disappear.
Agreed, BB are actual high quality designs, and can be played with, so kids still love them. My three girls squeal when they get Beanie Babies. But Funko Pops? Hated them from the first time I saw them.. they are the icon for mindless corporate consumerism.
I bought the TMNT line of pops at a convention about 10 years ago because I wanted them. Only pops I ever bought. Sold them on ebay about 3 years ago for an obscene amount of money. Glad I got rid of them when I did. They've plummeted.
I went to a small con at a mall recently, and every spare inch was filled with Funko. A booth would be 10% interesting collectibles and 90% Funko. They were like spores.
In fairness to Beanie Babies the artificial scarcity was dumb but the plushes themselves were cute and had short back stories. Plus modern Beanie Babies have only gotten cuter and at least can be given to little kids as plush toys that they'll look fondly back on. Funko pops with the rare exception are jank looking.
You can play and have fun with sealed expensive video games if you open them, same goes with collectible card games, lego, Warhammer, the list goes on, but if you open up that Funko Pop you just have a tacky statuette that reminds you of how your favorite TV show was cancelled and how much money you’ve wasted.
The Funko Dump was mostly other failed products such as their game line and was not the Funko Pops. They should have offered it all to comic shops and mom and pop shops at the cost of shipping so stuff could be given away or sold for cheap so it could be enjoyed and not just wasted. And maybe help out a bunch of little shops.
For the argument of didn't know due to no nintendo logo. They'll put the Nintendo oval there and sometimes spell it as Ninendo. I once bought a wii u pro controller from a gaming store that sold bootlegs that looked 100% liked the official pro controller except for that logo on the back you couldn't see when buying it. The dude even scratched up the controller to say that's why the wii u logo was missing from the front. I've seen people do this with snes and nes mini clones too. I've even seen some put the Nintendo branding on them and then two weeks later their booth at the mall is for rent after tons of people bought them
I honestly think that most of the publishers could just release Direct style events around the E3 window, and we could still have something that resembles an E3 up to a point. Though everything would be a lot more slickly produced pre made video live-streams with less live events.
Pretty much Funko became the next generation of beanie babies. I don't buy out of craziness. My most valuable figure is Jem from Jem and the Holograms and it was autographed by Samantha Newark herself. I'm keeping that figure for sentimental reasons not monetary game because that show was my childhood
@@synical13 Some are cool, like IPs you know will never get action figures like the Sex Pistols or Morrissey, or the odd film or show, but other than that.
They were but ugly pretty much from the get-go, absolutely useless, not even possible. They're just designed to sit in on a shelf in a box. It was never a question of whether it was going to end just how long it would take. The only one I ever considered buying was lovely Feyd
@@synical13 the appeal is that little statues like that were often crazy expensive so them being mass produced like this made them a little more affordable and meant they could do some more random characters (like the Pumpkin Rapper from Power Rangers)
So I only started listening to the CUPodcast a couple months ago. It seemed like they just recently did a finale episode and were calling it quits and moving on. I thought "wow, what timing, I just started listening" but, now it says #01 intro. so they aren't quitting?
I hate funko pops. I Think they are ugly as fck but hey, people can do and buy whatever they want, as long as they don't affect other people or create some sort of risk.
Well, I suppose if we look at this rationally, we are contributing to landfill which affects us now and will continue to affect future generations. This does need to stop. We produce garbage basically, that has little enduring utility.
I laughed out loud when Ian told Pat to shut up about the Legend of Zelda trailer. 😂 I agree with Ian, I'm going in blind to this new game. I watch the initial minute-long teaser, but I purposefully skipped the new release trailer. To keep me busy during the month wait until it's released I've been playing the new Resident Evil 4 remake and some of my backlog. I can't wait to get my hands on tears of the kingdom and experience The Wonder of a fresh new Zelda game again. Also the only Funko I ever liked was the Audry 2 from Little Show of Horrors. It looks how it's supposed to look
My long take on Funko Pops... Like every fad toy, they had their moment and are on a clear decline. I got into them when they first came out and I haven't bought one for myself in four years and even then I thought they were getting a bit bloated. My mother got on the craze a bit and started getting some for me on Christmas and my birthday and I had nowhere to display them but didn't have the heart to say stop and I don't believe in re-gifting or selling off a gift. Fast forward today and I have two kids one is 11 and she has NOT ONCE asked to play with my Pops or asked for one at the store. It's like a toy for the modern Peter Pan Conplex millennial. They don't even put these in the children's aisle. They're always with the electronics, music and gaming stuff. So you can't just give something to kids that kids aren't interested in. I was never one of those square foot stack collectors described here but have like 15 of these things in my house that I don't know what to do with when 6 years ago I just wanted ONE to display on my desk. I don't know how those who got 100s of these do it. It's weird today when I go to a store, see an entire wall of these and I see a Drew Bledsoe Pop and I'm like... who is buying this? Or who is buying the 6th variation of some minor character from some 80s film? They must be very cheap to make if they just produce a Pop of literally anything yet they still expect you to pay $12.99 for a random bass player of Judas Priest Pop or whatever.
it's not a toy to play with for the kids. it's a sign you buy to prove that you love the property XYZ. say you're a fan of ghostbusters, well are you a fan of ghostbusters if you didn't buy the funko pop? fett? roger rabbit? the baddie from roger rabbit? sure as f are but a lot of people fell into that. they're super cheap to make a "new" character and whats worse due to that they look shittier the more you have of them
@@gmti486 That doesn't make it not a fad. Rollerblading was a fad in the 90s but people still do it today. You can still buy them. The craze is far gone, though. Pops fit every definition of a fad.
@spencer s well seems to me like a long long time fad. Cause after that whole garbage dumb i couldn't believe people are still buying these by the bag full. Especially the soda funkos.
Funko Pops are an extremely sad phenomena (my worthless opinion, don't get mad if you're into them). I kinda expected they'd be more of a joke at this point, it feels like they've been around since I was a teenager, and I'm now middle-aged.
Funko POPs can still be collectable and profitable, but they have to be much more selective on their brands/franchises. They went all-in on the modern Marvel and Star Wars garbage by Disney and now they're paying the price. Any clearance aisle at Walmart or Target, is filled with POPS of Marvel's Eternals, Wakanda Forever, Star Wars' sequel trilogy, Mandalorian, etc.
Those nudie romhacks were all over the place in the Nesticle days. I wonder if those romhackers from 20+ years ago ever thought their hacks would be sold on a bootleg console? I wonder if those same people thought they'd end up in a piece on the nightly news?
Speaking of bootlegs and ROM hacks, I remember when my brother and I first got into emulation back in high school. One of my brother's friends got us an NES emulator with a bunch of ROMs, including an, ahem, "interesting" version of Mario 2... where all the main characters were wearing white hoods and all the enemies were in blackface 😮😮 If these people are that shocked by a naked Mowgli, then they have no idea how deep the rabbit hole goes when it comes to depraved ROM hacks
I was glad cody didn't win. Dude was out for the better part of a year with an injury, returned and won the rumble and did... absolutely nothing building him up to WM.
Back then E3 was great, going to Gametrailers and watching all those new Games. But for at least the least ten Years it was just useless, as everything was announced during the Year.
As I keep watching...the Beanie Baby comment. Sorry, but Funko is significantly different thank Beanie Babies in one regard -- People actually want them. Yes, artificial scarcity is greedy evil garbage, but let's not get history twisted. Beanie Babies barely had collectors that cared, and THEN the investors swarmed to result in a crash as more people wanted to sell than buy. With Funko, there's still a significant collector core that care. This won't crater like Beanie Babies because of that. I mean, it might if people just stop collecting or they don't stop over-manufacturing like idiots, but not because the hobby will be flooded with people who don't give a shit. Finally, the key to that difference? Pop Culture. These IPs mean something to people where Freddy the Flipper gray dolphin meant fuck all.
I have some mini Funkos for characters from Crash Team Racing but they actually look like the characters and have normal eyes and accurate proportions. Oh and I even took them out of the box to display (fucking wild, I know). Other than those, I have never understood the appeal of Funko pops nor had the desire to buy any. The regular ones look like absolute shit.
WWE got sold? Is that bad for them or Vinch MacMayo? I used to watch wrestling during the attitude era and the early days of smack down in the early 2000s. I don’t know why exactly but I stopped watching it.
There is a podcast I listen to where one of the hosts is always getting into an "investment" like funcopops and is always talking it about until he inevitably loses money and goes quiet about it. He did this with Crypto, NFTs and other BS. The split second he started bringing up buying and selling funcopops a couple months ago on the podcast I knew it was a really bad idea. The host actually seems like a decent dude and does not ever push other people into his shenanigans but his investment strategies are downright terrible.
Not sure if you actually WATCHED Wrestlemania but it was a TREMENDOUS show. The Raw after Mania was not great I agree. Not everyone can be ROMAN REIGNS or Brock Lesnar. Sometimes, you are just not that guy. I agree with a lot of your takes but Cody is still WAY OVER and doesn't lose anything by losing I think. Roman is going for 1000 days baybay! Oh darn, the Raw after didn't play tot he crowd. Do you really think they will lose viewers? Wrestling is a religion for most viewers now. They wll watch regardless while AEW continues to fall and get the same viewers every week as well. Not over 1 million views in months.
Funko pops...never liked them. This whole signature generic FP style just has 0 percent charm to me... Its just trash and its seems the factory is thinking the same way...🤣
You deserve to be told to shut up when you deliberately get into even the lightest of spoiler territory, knowing full well the person you’re talking to has said they want to go into it blind and not hear anything about it.
This was a surprise getting in my podcast feed. Regarding the mario movie, disagree it wasn't a commercial. It most definitely was. A well made, fun movie but a commercial. I also disagree with pat that it needed more "adult" stuff. Sure a good portion of watchers will be adults wo kids (like me) but I didn't need nor expected the film to cater to me or throw me jokes that only I would get.
When you spoke about the disposal of funkopops, let me please introduce you to the massive waste of the luxury goods industry, thousands of articles of clothing are just ripped up and thrown away to maintain brand value!
I'd take Pez over Funko Pops. Also, it would be nice if the ESA start posting their presentations going back to 1995. Though a decent amount of them are on RU-vid, many aren't. When I was younger, I would watch them on Gametrailers.
Another problem with the Cody thing was that The Bloodline (Reigns stable) had an incredible, nearly year long, story with Sami Zayn. It was the most over thing in the company so it SHOULD have been Sami's moment to become top face. So, instead of capitalizing on this organic thing that had become popular over the last year they ended the whole bloodline/sami story a month early by having reigns beat Sami on some nothing PPV all so they could have that meaningless Cody match at WrestleMania. Now, Reigns and the bloodline are no longer over as heels, they're feeding Cody to Brock and Sami is relegated to 1/3rd of a tag team when he should be THE guy. WWE was really really good for a while and they just flushed everything they had going down the toilet. It's absolutely insane.
Love that Pat mentioned the old Video Game Museum at E3 from way back. Those tour & history walkthroughs he did are still some of my favorite to this day.
Ah man the Roo mention hit me, that guys content is incredibly nostalgic for me. Would love to see a conversation with you all if it could ever be arranged.
He legally cannot return to his channel, as the term "gems", "hidden gems", and "16-bit gems" have all been outlawed in gaming youtube since 2018. Seriously, I remember Pat saying Roo (and I think his wife) are actual scientists, so that probably takes up a lot of time.
Also they're printing figures of characters. People don't know or care about. I see it a lot at my local Best buy. I don't even know these characters and don't get me started on GameStop. Half of my local store is just filled with those damn things
Once when i worked at gamestop we had the Naruto 9 tales pop come in every one was looking for it we got calls all day for it i tired of getting harassed for it so i bought to take out the system
My biggest disappointment with Funko POP is they never came out with a Half-Life series and they didn't produce the rest of the X-Men in the yellow and blue uniforms.
I didnt think about this until like yesterday about Tommy, but there's a lyric in the song Cult of Personality by the band Living Colour that makes me think of his relationship with the shills. It goes: "I exploit you, still you love me. I tell you 1 and 1 makes 3." My brother almost got me an Andre the Giant funco pop a few years ago and it would have been cool, but I'm glad he didn't buy it for me. I'm glad I collect WWE Mattel figures I can take them out of the box and put the accessories on them. I did get a buddy of mine who was going through a rough patch a Dude Love funco pop and he appreciated that. My Mattel WWE collection is way cooler than a Funco pop collection.
People were literally getting additional money from the government while on unemployment due to pandemic layoffs while they were stuck indoors and you don't think that has anything to do with with a spike in a collecting hobby?
Funko Pops used to be a gateway into collecting better figures, kinda like a starter kit. They just couldn’t help themselves and started throwing EVERYTHING at the wall and hoped some of it would stick.
@@mariokart8715 When they first came out I was somewhat interested in them, but they never had anything I wanted. When they finally did come out with stuff, their figures had become so over saturated and half-assed I just passed. It truly is IDENTICAL to Beanie Babies when I was a kid.
Omg stfu comparing aew to wrestlemania and raw after mania. Lmao. Aew fan boy alert. 😂 Wrestlemania was amazing. The story continues. Long term story telling people.
Never really got the appeal of Funko Pops, they all look so similar to me. I mean if a figure of something you like is your thing, why not get something that actually looks like it rather than a deformed version?
