This isn’t a spot of honor: as much as $36 million price of Funko Pops to be entombed in landfills
On: March 3, 2023
As noticed by Kotaku, a latest earnings name by Funko Inc. revealed that the vinyl tchotchke producer merely has an excessive amount of stock sitting in warehouses, and that it will likely be “writing off” $30-$36 million price of it—which is to say, pitching it within the trash. After some bountiful years, together with an early-pandemic bump, Funko appears to be feeling the burn of a saturated market and diminished demand.
funk_pops_found_at_landfill_to_be_destroyed from r/funkopop
This harmful burial ought to be accompanied by some type of warning. When the inhabitants of Earth within the distant future stumble throughout this vinyl trove, they’ve to know what they’re stepping into. “We thought of ourselves to be a strong tradition. This place is just not a spot of honor,” our message to future civilizations would start. “No extremely esteemed deed is commemorated right here… nothing is valued right here,” the inscription on our huge gravesite for upwards of two.7 million Funko Pops ($30 million divided by approx. $11 a Pop) would proceed. “What’s right here is harmful and repulsive to us.”
OK, in order that’s truly a part of a proposed message from Sandia Nationwide Laboratories to warn away these within the far-future from nuclear waste websites, however it’s hilarious to me to think about far-future archaeologists uncovering an unlimited trove of vinyl bobblehead Geralts, Grogus, and Green Goblins out within the wastes left behind by our society.
And perhaps they are not that unhealthy. Funko Pops usually are not for me, however a self-conscious, pronounced dislike of the ever present collectible has change into a type of standard-issue, lazy signifiers, a reheated opinion you get to current prefer it’s some edgy or groundbreaking factor—see additionally hating Nickelback and pondering Die Onerous is the movie to have fun your religious or secular winter vacation of alternative. Funko Pops aren’t actually nuclear waste, even when they’re a bit dated by my reckoning—distinctly pre-pandemic, 2018-core like Instagram Reside, “popcorn lung,” the pre-widespread-legal weed CBD craze, or having a way of hope for the long run.
We have reached out to Funko to substantiate the grim destiny of the hundreds of thousands of little guys, nevertheless it would not look good. A 2020 submit by Funko fan account MayTheFunkoBWY paperwork the corporate’s destruction of extra inventory in a previous write-down. This submit from Reddit consumer edelwiess20 just some days in the past purports to indicate Funko inventory at a landfill primed to be destroyed.
The burial of so many foolish toys out within the desert (presumably, we do not know where Funko’s treasure can be hidden away or if it’s going to be unfold throughout a number of websites), the sullying of Mom Earth with 2.7 million little vinyl guys? Now that is a cry for assist from a spiritually sick society if I’ve ever seen one.
It is not like we’ve not seen this all earlier than, although. Simply this previous week a Redditor noticed $100,000 price of Magic playing cards in a landfill, whereas Atari’s mass burial of E.T. The Additional Terrestrial cartridges remained unbelieved by many till it was uncovered by a documentary crew.
Nonetheless, it would be good if we might perhaps be taught a lesson from this form of factor for as soon as. We appear to maintain appearing out these easy, absurdist morality performs about delight, extra, and manic profit-seeking. If the far-future archaeologists decide that these buried Funkos have been our gods, we’ll deserve that indignity.
