\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCan someone explain the Funko Pop hatred thing to me?
I can understand not liking the weird round-eyes-no-mouth aesthetic (although I myself think it\u2019s cute).\u00a0 I can understand feeling contempt for the collectible-hoarding brand of consumerism, I suppose.\u00a0 But the weird offhand commentary that crosses my radar seems much\u2026deeper, and more specific, than that.\u00a0
(I\u2019m honestly glad that someone in the world is trying to do the \u201cwhatever you love, we\u2019ll make you a plastic doll of it in our house style\u201d thing.\u00a0 Sadly they mostly don\u2019t make the Funko Pops I\u2019d actually want, but \u2013 that seems like a cause for a wistful shrug directed at my inner toy-loving child, not anything else.)\u00a0
Is this tied in with some kind of subcultural or tribal conflict that I don\u2019t understand?
Personally I find them banal and resent that they now take up a bunch of real estate in stores that used to mainly sell media (though, to be fair, those stores would just go out of business faster without them). That said, I recall reading a piece once \u2013 which I sadly can no longer find \u2013 talking about how they came in at a time when custom vinyl figurines were popular, and mass-produced what were previously individually sculpted figures with more character, so I think there are some hobbyists who are mad that they crowded out more interesting versions of the same thing.
much like the Big Dog t-shirts of yore, funko pops are something that weird people erroneously take as a sign of the cultural and intellectual poverty of \u201cnormie\u201d society because they\u2019re everywhere, when in fact they\u2019re most often bought by people who are also weird but in a different way
They\u2019re top-heavy and fall over all the time if they\u2019re on the same surface that anyone uses for anything.
\n\nOn the dining table in my residence is a collection of thrift-shop vases of thrift-shop artificial flowers, some random glass Christmas ornament someone gave me propped upside down in a vase an amateur ceramicist gave me, and my Shabbat candlesticks, all of which stay nicely upright even when people put elbows on the table, bump into table corners while walking, et cetera. There is also my roommate\u2019s old funko pop, which is currently flat on its face.
\n\nAnd funko pops are not pretty enough to merit their own special display shelf.
The concept is “whatEVER mass-media property you care about, we make merchandise of it you can buy!”, it’s not terribly odd that became a shorthand for a life overweighted towards caring about mass-media properties and buying merchandise
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