W is for We Do This Stuff So You Don't Have To

If you go down to your local toy shop or super store, head-shop, gift shop, gaming, alturnate-culture, t-shirt or 'metal-head' shop today you will find Funko, it's like a rash; in 18-months it's gone stratospheric. I don't suppose it will last long, as crazes never do (except skateboarding, but even that settled to a level not matched by the heights of the '77-80 bubble), maybe another five years of wall-to-wall Funko and people will wake-up to the fact they are ugly and over-hyped!

In the meantime, where there is a craze, there will be a knock-off and I shot these shelfies from MGA Entertainment . . .

. . . in Poundland a year ago, they are 'Army Men' (well "Awesome Little Green Men"!) so slightly more deserving of a place here at Small Scale World than most of that Funko output, but it's a marginal thing!

These is only the one design (all four sides shown) of 'Blind Box' and with '100+ to collect' I make that £100+, hardly the ethos of a cheap shop, but then they've been selling 60p or 85p RRP-items for a whole-pound for years, so don't ever think there's any altruism behind discount stores, there 'aint, it's a 'business model' . . . a revenue vehicle, hard-steeped in capitalism and aiming its sights at the poorest in society!

Then Peter Evans gave me this! So we can look at them in all their glory! As you can see the blind box contains two blind bags, a dog tag (you'd be well pleased with 100+ dog-tags in a pile huh!) and a recruitment poster (think identical check-list) in one and a random figure in the other.

Apart from the actual figure (who you can see - comes set in his own vacuum-formed blister/holder) it's all garbage; it's all straight to recyc., planet-destroying, ocean-bobbing, world-ending, ephemeral, worthless, pointless, shite.

Put the figures in blind bags, put the bags in the counter-top display, have the check-list poster as a download and bin the tags! And if you think I'm being ridiculous, this stuff is coming, we have to end the way we currently live our lives, or our lives will end.

He's Ok for a laugh, but note that the expressive faces on the box are replaced by a much plainer affair in the box? Keeps the unit-cost down!

Still 100+ figures, think about it - Airfix used to have from 7 poses in their 54mm sets and issued an average of 3 sets a year over ten-odd years (32 sets '69-80?), or 21+ poses per year, if these go to a second series they will be arguably as, or more successful (by some parameters) than Airfix's 1:32nd scale figures.

Something to think about when you read some of the nonsense some people [in the hobby] opine about the hobby . . . it's not about 'the hobby', it's about the industry and with the likes of Kinder, Phidal, Funko, Jada . . . Schleich, Papo, et al, all producing figures, the industry is doing OK, it's just not issuing many 54mm cowboys these days!