Good, those things are retarded and only exist to trick autistic people into believing they're buying something of value when in reality they're just buying ugly action figures.
They're not nearly as good as action figures. Action figures can be posed into different poses. Action figures can be played with by children (or manchildren).
A funko pop is just an ugly vinyl statue. It has no utility at all. And unlike, say, an anime figurine, it only vaguely resembles what it's supposed to be. So much so that even if you are familiar with whatever it is, there's a good chance you wouldn't recognise it unless you are a White Men For Harris type Solyent urbanite who replaced his personality with bottom-of-the-barrel mass-produced pop culture slop. And it's just a thing in a box, you don't even get to assemble it yourself like a model plane or Gunpla or something. And let's be clear, action figures, anime figurines and gunpla are pretty sus things for adults to collect already - if you have any, people are going to assume you have a body pillow or an MLP cum jar. And these things are
worse.
It really does signify the absolute state of pop culture in the 2010s and the kinds of people who consoomed it. All art is stripped away, leaving just a dead-eyed vinyl cube, onto which the most basic signifiers of a character's appearance are glued. Hey look, that's Harry Potter's scar, and his haircut, and his glasses! That's the only part of Harry Potter present. Nothing of his personality, the stories he is part of, the actors who portrayed him, the things he did, the things he likes. Nothing that actually matters in fiction. Just his most basic and most shallow external signifiers. Because these are not art, nor are they intended to be. They are horrid little vinyl shibboleths. The difficulty in working out what they are even supposed to be is part of the point, it is supposed to be esoteric to outsiders. "Wow, that's the Spider-Man from comic issue #49857 with the yellow bracelet! I recognise that, I will communicate to its owner that I, too, know this obscure Spider-man! We are kindred spirits, because we have read the same disposable piece of literal garbage! I base my friendships on whether we share the same very narrow pieces of pop culture!"
Thinking about it, it's no small wonder that the people who collect these things are woke shitlibs. Because shitlibbery is about signifiers, the more obscure the better. It's not about wanting the world to be better, it's about having the same pride flag and self-diagnosed mental illnesses as the next they/them. They collect badges and slogans and hair colours and pride flags and genders and imaginary disabilities and mental health diagnoses, rather than develop a personality. It's not just about signalling virtue, it's about shibboleths and trying to find friendship on the basis of symbols. And of course that's a really shit way to try to connect with people, because as soon as you disagree about one of these inconsequential things, be it using the "wrong" symbol for autism or liking the "wrong" children's novel about magical wizard children, then Friendship is Ended. They don't understand how to form actual connections, only to connect their own little colour patterns with someone else's little colour patterns, only to freak out if it's the "wrong" one.
That is all 2010s consoomer shitlib slop culture ever was. A collection of haircuts and accessories that could be plastered onto personality-free statues - be they funko pops or actual people. Signals and symbols and fashion accessories in place of real ideas or depth. Shallow art, shallow politics, shallow culture. Boiling down Geralt of Rivia into a haircut and a pair of boots and stripping him of his personality and getting furious when people notice. Instead of Star Wars being about the Hero's Journey, courage, personal growth, sacrifice and the triumph of freedom over tyranny, they tried to make it only about laser swords and TIE Fighters and Darth Vader's fucking helmet, meaningless symbols that you can stick on an ugly vinyl blob and convince idiots is the same thing. And once you convince those idiots that Space Wizards and Laser Swords was all Star Wars was, you can gut it and replace it with political propaganda, which the same idiots will swallow, and they will buy the ugly vinyl cube because it has a laser sword and that mean's it's Luke Skywalker, and then you can make Luke Skywalker a bitter old coward who betrayed his friends, and those same idiots will fight for your right to do that because all he ever was to them was a guy with a laser sword. Hollowing out culture like that means you can fill the hole with your own vile ideas and have a ready-made army of zombies ready to defend your vandalism because you've convinced them that if it can't be glued onto a funko pop, it wasn't really culture to start with.
I hate funko pops. I hate the people that make them. I hate the people who make the bastardised pop culture that made them possible. And I hate the mindless idiots that buy them. Fuck.
That has been my essay about funko pops that I wrote while waiting for someone to call me who is supposed to call me but hasn't and I'm going to fucking strangle him when I get hold of him. I hope you like it.
