Are Funko Pops the New Beeanie Babies?

Over the last few years we have seen one of the biggest and most aggressive pop culture collectible lines ever find its way into the shelves of just about every store out there. The Funko Pop Figures really are everywhere right now.

For those of you who are living under a rock, and you really would have to be hiding away to not be exposed to them, Funko Pop Figures are vinyl figurines with over-sized ‘cute’ heads that cover more pop culture franchises than can be kept track of. I’ve made the joke about how if they are not doing a franchise, just wait a few weeks and so far they keep proving me right. I would challenge you to go and find a list of their products, which keeps expanding, and look. There is a real good chance they have already put out figures for all your favorite franchises and if not, just wait.

 

I originally was not collecting any Pop Figures. As R2-D2 is one of the main characters I collect, I picked up one of the R2s they put out. The I went after a few other characters and now there ae a few dozen Pop Figures in my collection from the various franchise I’m a fan of.

 

All the big name collectible stores and standard chain stores have jumped in and gotten their own exclusive Pop Figures or special packs of Pop Figure related collectibles. The market for these figures has just kept growing with some stores have full on walls of them.

 

And not surprisingly at all the secondary market prices for some of these figures have risen to impressive levels.

 

Of course anyone who knows how collectibles work have to look at such numbers with rational skepticism. I have seen the Pop Figures get compared to Beanie Babies, which was one of the most famous collapsing of a collectible line that has insanely inflated secondary market prices when the hype of them was everywhere. Lots of people invested thousands of dollars in Beanie Babies to end up with a bunch of worthless little stuffed animals.

 

Of course I will give my regular advice on collecting here. DO NOT collect anything purely as an investment. Collect something you enjoy collecting and want to own. If you then get to the point where they are so worthless you can’t give them away, if you are enjoying having them the value doesn’t matter.

 

The collecting market can be crazy to navigate at times. One general rules seems to be that the secondary market prices are NOT going to be stable for anything only a few years old. The supply and demand for newer collectibles is not set and gets inflated by assumed ideas of unverified rarity or artificial demand. This is what killed the Beanie Babies values. Everyone thought these new pieces coming out where going to be rare and sought after, and then once it all settled down, everyone who wanted one had them as well as thousands of people who did not really want them, who also spent ten to twenty or more times the value for them being convinced it would be a good investment. So many people do NOT understand why the toys of the 70s and 80s became so valuable, so they jump on the idea that all collectibles that get hyped will be valuable in the future.

 

As a rule it seems like it takes about two decades for collectibles to settle into their real level of demand and popularity.

 

My advice about collecting Pop Figures for value is to just not. It is highly risky to make actual investments on such collectibles in hopes of long term profits as there really is no way to know the long term demand.

 

With that being said, I would think chances are that the Pop Figure will stay a highly collectible line and has a good chance of maintaining their value.

 

As I said, they are producing figures for so many different franchise, some of which do not have that much it the way of collectibles out there. This means that audience for Pop Figures is huge, far larger than Beanie Babies was and really bigger than just about all other collectible lines out there. I cannot think of a another series that has gotten the rights to so many different diverse product licensing. Pez might be the only real competitor in that regards, and Pez have been able to stay highly collectible and valuable. Pop Figures are able to appeal to several different levels of fans and that does play a huge role in creating long term value and collectability. Beanie Babies tried to do that, but fell short, just not being able to get that bigger level of appeal.

 

While fair comparisons can be made between Pop Figures and Beanie Babies, especially when someone is thinking about the idea of long term investments, and there is a valuable lesson of caution to be found in doing such, there really is a noticeable difference between the two. Of course in the end it still should all come down to a personal desire to collect above the concern over the value or the idea it is an investment. The first priority of collection should always be the enjoyment of collecting above all else.

 

I’ve been enjoying collecting Pop Figures and plan to keep picking up the ones I like with no real concern about their value.

 

Now I need to get my own creations popular enough to warrant Pop Figures getting made of them. How cool would it be to have Georgie and Armand’s Place Pop Figures out there?

 

And if you have not yet picked up any of my writings, this might be a good time to check them out.

For the month of March I will be donating all my earnings from book sales to the Red Cross efforts in the Ukraine.

Go to http://tinyurl.com/IBCauthor to support me and the people of the Ukraine at the same time.

Help make the dream of Georgie and Armand Pop Figures become a reality and tell all your friends.

The State of Star Wars as I See It

 I have not hidden that I am one of the fans who enjoyed the sequel trilogy. While the films are not perfect and I could do a whole post on my issues with them, I still enjoyed them and prefer them to the prequel films. I have also been enjoying everything that has been being put out on Disney +.

 

We just got The Book of Boba Fett, which was enjoyable for the most part. It really was the first time they worked on giving some real character development to Boba Fett and that was in may ways a huge deal. I felt the best part of the series was giving us the flashbacks of just what Boba went through after he apparent death in Return of the Jedi up to his reappearance in The Mandalorian. That was the story we needed to see. And of course there were many awesome elements tot eh show, which were regretfully hurt by poor story pacing, especially in the last episode with the grand final battle going on. With all the great concepts that were there, built up and gathered together, it should have been a much more intense fight than what we got. The story was there (Although I would liked to have seen Fett leave Tatooine and gone on a bigger adventure) but the pacing just felt off in most of the episodes. I won’t go into potential spoiler details here, but trust me that we get some huge concepts that are going to be remembered.

 

Now we just got the trailer for the Obi-Wan Kenobi series that will be out in May, and it looks awesome. Ewan McGregor is back as Obi-Wan and everything in the trailer looks like they are doing this correctly. The focus will be on the Imperial Inquisitors hunting down the Jedi and for whatever reason Kenobi has to take a break in guarding Luke from afar to get involved. The trailer showed us what looks to be a new villain who gets enough screen time that is suggests she will be the main one who our hero encounters, and she looks badass. We know Hayden Christensen will be in the series, but it has not been revealed if he is Darth Vader or Anakin in flashbacks or both. Due to what we know from A New Hope, there should be no direct contact between Vader and Kenobi at this point, but there is a good chance we’ll see Vader at least for a few scenes in an episode or two, just not as the main antagonist. I would also bet we will see flashback scene with Obi-Wan and Anakin, as there is a lot they could do there to strength up the connection they had that was not well played out in the films.

 

I am very much looking forwards to seeing just what they can do with the series.

 

The Star Wars Galactic Cruiser Hotel/Immersive Experience has opened has been getting good reviews as well as solid bookings, showing the fans are interested and enjoying it, despite the high price. The more I see about it the more I wish it was in the budget to go. It really does looks to be a one of a kind experience.

 

We have the third season of The Mandalorian being worked on, as well as several other series, like Andor, the Rogue One prequel series that has a lot of potential showing the darker side of the Rebellion, which is in post-production right now.

 

So right now the Star Wars franchise is healthy and alive, with a lot of great stuff coming out adding to and exploring new areas the universe. While I do not expect it all to be great, I am loving what they are doing and I feel the overall excitement is still strong for us fans.