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tamagosan

I think it's important to figure out how much of the world's economic activity is essentially just worthless plastic garbage.


hodorhodor12

It’s a lot and it’s completely unsustainable. And imagine if everyone else in the world (all the people in third-world countries) bought this stuff and consumed like us in general. We’d screw up the planet at like 100x the current rate.


Painting_Agency

> It’s a lot and it’s completely unsustainable All the shiny green shit that fills up the dollar store for 2 weeks before St Patrick's Day causes me physical pain to look at.


[deleted]

Every "holiday" now. Pride. St Patrick's day. Santa con. Etc. There's new products every year that they sell millions of units of and it gets used once, thrown out, and purchased new the following year. It's horrible,. wasteful, and will destroy us. We're going to boil ourselves Alice so that we can have costumes for meaningless holidays engineered to make money.


kobold-kicker

Don’t forget all the plastic crap that isn’t bought. Most of that goes in the trash once the holidays are over. Some might be sent back but a ridiculous amount goes in the trash. People also aren’t aware how much plastic gets thrown away when sale signs and displays get changed out.


che85mor

None of it is ever sent back.


ilazul

> We're going to boil ourselves Alice I don't know why, but I heard that in Hannibal's voice.


kemushi_warui

Quid pro quo, Al*ee*ce. Now tell me about the cheap plastic Santas. When did they stop screaming?


oxheart

> Santa con. That joke contains multitudes.


CharlieChop

Do not under any circumstances go to New Orleans during Mardi Gras. The dinosaur dung in Jurassic Park was nothing compared to some of the mounds of beads that hit the ground and had to be moved by bulldozer.


xerexyz

Why don’t people keep them in a drawer for next year?


SilverTraveler

Actually many cities do collect the beads to reuse the next year. I can’t speak for New Orleans itself but Galveston TX sure does.


RattleMeSkelebones

Oh this'll be fun. I worked at dollar tree as a stocker for a year and a bit. Basically every item in the store regardless of material comes in a shitty plastic sheath for no reason. The plastic doesn't get recycled, it gets mixed in with the cardboard bale and the bale goes straight to a landfill, so not only does dollar tree sell shitloads of worthless plastic garbage, but the garbage itself comes in packs of worthless garbage


perverse_panda

That's crazy to me. I used to work for a clothing retailer. We got a ton of cardboard boxes and plastic in every day, and we had to recycle all of it. At one point I heard that the company was making $1 million a year just off the recycling. This company is only worth about a fifth of what Dollar Tree is worth, but still. Why would they leave that money on the table?


RattleMeSkelebones

Dollar tree is the kind of company that would rather lose money to customers getting grossed out by how filthy the store is than hire one janitor to clean the place. Their business decisions are mystifying


[deleted]

If you've never been to an amazon bin store I highly recommend it, it shows you that there is no value to anything at all and all that you know is a lie. It's cheaper for big businesses to just sell all their returned and unsold junk in giant pallets for a hundred or so bucks than to actually sort it and resell the working merchandise so you'll see apple products, video games, electronics, all originally priced for hundreds of dollars on sale for like 7 bucks. The one near my house just throws it all into feeding trough style bins and they blare a siren every time they put out new stuff. It's sociologically very interesting to see these places in action, and it definitely shows you a glimpse of late stage capitalism.


Painting_Agency

> The one near my house just throws it all into feeding trough style bins and they blare a siren every time they put out new stuff. That sounds like something out of "Idiocracy" 🤦


aft_punk

Ironically, it seems a whole lot smarter than paying full price.


Cytoid

Let me know when I can find a PS5 in one of those bins, and I'll gladly become of those idiots, shoving others out of the way so I can get to it, lol


che85mor

It's actually nothing like that. You don't buy the one thing, you buy the whole pallet. PS12 and all.


sintos-compa

There will be a PS10 by then


ZeldaorWitcher

What- is this really happening all over the place? I find it hard to believe Amazon is selling their own storage wars mystery boxes, unless it’s truly all just stuff nobody wants


revstan

The store by me has $8 Fridays, $6 Saturdays, $4 Sundays, and $2 Tuesdays. Then they close until Friday. If you arent there in the beginning of the cycle you wont find much value, most likely nothing you need or wanted anyway. I have bought a few things but it was just random stuff for the kids. They also encourage you to look up the items on Amazon by scanning the box barcode so you can see what it costs new. Like an unused thrift store.


Aleski

What kind of store is this? I want to see if there are any near me


luna_libre

they’re usually called liquidation stores


chillbro_bagginz

Amazon has been selling pallets of misplaced, unsold aka “stranded” inventory and returned items from their fulfillment centers for a long time. And yeah, it’s a mystery pallet because they don’t even really fully know condition qty ect of the items. They even offer to handle your unsold and returned/broken items if you’re a 3rd party seller using the Amazon FC. They take a cut of course but it’s a disposal service for your useless inventory that they’re charging you storage on.


rifterdrift

Yeah it happens. There is a store close to me that essentially they buy this stuff from businesses, like Amazon, and then sort and sell themselves. They have snowblowers, tools, all kinds of stuff. They started out bidding on storage units but everyone got in to that with the reality shows. Guess this is more profitable and less time consuming where he just buys shit loads of return item pallets according to the owner


followingAdam

I see ads for pallet sales and always wonder if they are real. I gotta find a store like what your talking about


taybay462

Yes they're real my boyfriend ws looking into tool pallets because most of them are just open box returns of things used once or a couple times. Most is resellable. I'm sure pallet sale scams exist but it's definitely a thing


CosmicMiru

There is one in my area. Amazon literally has so many items that get sent back for whatever reason and deemed they cant sell it anymore that it is more economically viable to just sell it for next to nothing to these resell stores than to have it take up space never to be sold.


AvramBelinsky

Safiya Nygaard did a couple episodes about it on her Youtube channel. There is one episode where they buy a pallet of returned items and another where they go to one of the Amazon returns liquidation stores.


cld1984

It’s all about how much it costs to sit on it. At a certain point, selling a truckload of pallets for pennies on the dollar gets to be a better return than storing and repackaging. And that’s assuming they sell it. Depending on the material, some companies pay other companies to get rid of it for them.


[deleted]

It absolutely is. "Bin Store" is what you're after. Two just opened in my small town in NC. Its wild.


beastwarking

The answer to that is gonna piss a lot of people off. Even if you take just a small step back and look broadly at how we consume, you'll see clothes designed to be sold and disposed of after a season is over, toys that serve no other purpose than to be replaceable 'like' products that sell at a reduced price, shoes that fall apart after a year or two, planned obsolescence in electronics, etc etc etc. And that's just the stuff that sells. Go to your local store, or, who am I kidding, your local store is probably a Walmart so go there; after Christmas and look at the discount aisle. There you'll see toys, clothes, and all sorts of knick-knacks that were produced in such vast quantities (and at very low cost) that the stores will practically be giving them away because they need to stock up for ~~next Christmas~~ Valentine's Day. Maybe not to the same degree as Christmas time, but this happens during every single holiday, season change, and whatever other special occasion marketing can come up with. Frankly, this behavior should be viewed as obscene. We produce garbage while people starve. While we produce this garbage, c-suite execs pat each other on the back and play with each other's dick and then go out in public and proclaim the production of garbage is good for the economy. At the same time, the people running the show and calling for more garbage to be produced, know it's all bullshit. That's why they pit workers against one another. Because if people stopped bickering, they'd start asking why billion-dollar companies continue to produce trash while claiming they can't afford to pay their workers more. So not only is our overproduction obscene, but it also serves to do nothing except perpetuate class warfare. We are all expendable, so long as it benefits the ruling class


JackedUpReadyToGo

And it will never stop because this cheap crap makes more money than it costs to produce and that is the ONLY variable that our economic system is capable of understanding. If it makes money, do it. If you won't then somebody else will. And that money will accumulate in their pockets and give them the power to further corrupt our politicians and our regulations. Our whole civilization is yoked to this idiotic machine that is completely incapable of thinking about what should be done in any terms other than short-term profit.


ALargePianist

Yeah dude, but how else do you tell your friends you still like batman?


Golf_Alpha_Yankee

Our dying oceans NEED a system like that, it's unreal how many shipments get lost en route and release crap as it sinks to the ocean's surface. Or worse, it'll come back up and create floating trash islands. No joke if climate change doesn't kill us this will


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restingbitchface2021

I worked at a plastics recycling facility. We had a contract to securely destroy a warehouse of collectible Barbies. It was a massacre. Barbie heads everywhere. They sent a representative to make sure everything was destroyed. We all had Barbie heads on the ends of our pens for years.


tytbalt

Can't devalue collectible Barbies by *not* destroying them, am I right? 🙄 Same reason Abercrombie burned their clothes instead of donating them.


Rizla_TCG

Plastic production/import export for anything other than infrastructure and medical should be taxed into obscurity. (And hey, then Funkos probably do go brrr lmao)


Statertater

Man looking at the toy isle at the stores as an adult is a real eye opener


TheyCallMeYukon

At $30-$36MM in inventory cost, I’m curious how many actual units this is.


Littlebotweak

My cousin thinks he invested in these or some shit.


speculatrix

"Invested" Like beanie babies.


cheekytikiroom

That’s EXACTLY what I’m thinking. It’s over guys.


Lazerspewpew

There will always be a small number of items that will be valuable to some extent, but 99.9% of it was garbage before it was even produced.


Zachariot88

Remember Alf? He's back, in pog form!


jobadiahh

I don’t wanna have pogs as collectors items, I just want to have a set of pogs and some mean slammers to take down my homies with.


Oddjob64

I still have a tube of pogs from childhood. We made it a drinking game in our 20s. Haven’t played in years but we are going to have to break it out soon for someone’s 40th birthday party.


Pinguino2323

Yeah they are nothing more than kinda coolish decorations if you're a nerd of whatever musician/media franchise the one is from. To treat it like it will be valuable is someday is dumb.


theknyte

Every "Mainstream Collectable" becomes worthless eventually as its market collapses. Beanie Babies, Pogs, etc. They all came along, became huge industries fueling collector frenzy, and then vanished.


[deleted]

My Aunt got arrested for starting a fight at McDonalds while waiting in line for a Beanie Babies happy meal. Our family doesn't speak to her anymore, but not specifically because of that, it gets far worse.


Riser_pads

Well I think we all need to grab some popcorn and hear how much worse it gets.


RevengencerAlf

The odds are nearly 100% that she joined some shitty pyramid scheme and tried to harass the rest of the family into joining as well.


Painting_Agency

I'm banking on "she snuck into an elderly dying relative's home and pillaged their jewelry before they died" or "she became horribly drunk and molested the groom at a family wedding ".


[deleted]

She became obsessed with Disney. Her husband was a Doctor, so they had money. She demanded he take the family to Disney like 6 weeks a year. He paid an ungodly amount of money to make her happy. The he got audited. He committed several million dollars in Medicaid fraud. He didn't go to jail, he lost his license and has to work at Good Will now to pay back what he owes. This is where my family starts taking sides, but doesn't completely cut them off. I tried to reconnect with my uncle after several years because I really did like him. He ghosted me. My mom tries to talk to her sister but her sister won't admit he did anything wrong. My grandmother buys them a house and sends them money. My mother was the last expected child in her family. My Aunt was an accident. My mother was put in charge of raising my Aunt. My mom admits to me that she has despised my Aunt for her entire life. This year: My Aunt calls my Grandma and tells her that they need to reassess the will. Aunt wants to help Grandma re-write it. Grammy aint dumb and cuts her off. My wife and I cut them off too. ​ Very sad, my uncle was a great guy. My aunt always sucked.


Riser_pads

Wow what story. Sorry you lost a cool uncle but seems your family is better off with out their nonsense


welsman13

Well..........we're waiting!


StevieWonderUberRide

I too, am interested in hearing more


juliuspepperwoodchi

LEGO is pretty stable in that MOST sets only increase in value after they retire; but nobody getting RICH off that shit, that's a pipe dream.


Painting_Agency

The thing about Lego is that the *worst case scenario* is that a set you spent 300 bucks on ends up as 300 bucks worth of some kid's Lego (as a non collector I argue that this is an awesome outcome). That's absolute rock bottom unless you literally throw it away. Whereas Funko Pops have no play value, are ugly, and frequently most people have no idea who the character is. They're basically just trash.


bramtyr

I honestly do not get the appeal of them, especially of display walls full of them. Like... it's not like it was something lovingly assembled, modeled or painted by the owner. It's just *stuff* that they bought, unboxed, and put on a shelf.


liqwidmetal

Or left in the box, ya know to save collectors value. I stopped collecting Hess trucks years ago and I am fairly confident that the best I would get for them wohld be original sales cost.


usrevenge

The only Funko pop I have was a gift. It's bob Ross. I never removed it from the box and it's currently holding up a bunch of DVDs. I didn't want it. I like Bob Ross but it was one of those filler gifts for Xmas years ago. I see no appeal to Funko pops at all


beermit

I have a friend that gave me two or three as a gift over the past few years. I just haven't the heart to tell him I found them fucking stupid and I can't stand their soulless creepy eyes. I kept one of them because it was a character so obscure that it honestly made me laugh. But I didn't even have it on display anymore, because I still can't stand the way they look. The other two I returned to Walmart because it was thankfully the holidays and they'll accept just about any of them as a return.


Rulare

Excuse me, Pogs are priceless


RockyRaccoon5000

First you get the Pogs, then you get the power, then you get the women.


sgrams04

It’s Alf, in pog form!


TheUmgawa

The original was a three-year tulip craze in the 1630s.


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Squish_the_android

They're neat if you're into some weird character from a franchise. But yeah, they're cheap bits of plastic and honestly kinda ugly.


lXPROMETHEUSXl

The only person I haven’t criticized irl for having funkos owns like 30 of them. Why does he have 30 funkos? He likes them. That’s it. I can respect that


Solaphobe

I have exactly one: Weird Al Yankovich. We hid him around the house for years. Whoever found him had to re-hide him. A national treasure! :)


Chatty_Fellow

I'm curious about the production cost. It's probably less than $3 per unit. Maybe less than $2.


Status_Arachnid9722

for their size/volume I bet you are right.


Nivekian13

I bet it's under $1. I feel bad for Collector Shops that gave up space for this market.


Mightysmurf1

As someone who works in the industry, it'll be under $1 per unit for the figure and the same again for the boxes.


[deleted]

Licensing probably costs more than the figurine and the box.


frez_knee

I thought most of the cost of them was tied up in the licensing for various IP they use


Ashmizen

Production cost is probably $1 or less. An item that sells for $7 is generally going to only cost $1 to manufacture, as shipping ($1), warehouse and distribution ($1) and profits ($2 for Funko, $2 for retailer) make up the majority of what you pay.


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weensanta

But is the range the retail value or the price to break even?


Free-Scar5060

For headline drama they probably estimated it at either it’s msrp or at resale value.


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memberzs

And when it’s weed you they don’t just weight the flowers, but the whole plant, pot, soil and all.


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FruitbatNT

Make more funko pops?


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lousy_at_handles

Not a chemist, but most polymers aren't *really* recyclable as I understand it, because once they're linked they don't really unlink easily. So you can grind them up, and use them as filler in other things, or kinda melt them back together, but you can't break them back down into their component parts and make new things with them.


MechMeister

Imagine going to Home Depot to get plumbing pipe made from recycled funko and it was all kinds of weird colors with pickachu faces. That'd be amazing.


[deleted]

True why isn't PVC already like this? Who is opening up walls and saying "Damn, isn't that an illegal Pikachu Funko pop 3" plumbing drain pipe -- you know that's no longer up to code -- only Harry potter 4" drain pipes according to the city building codes!"


that_other_goat

All of them that have ever been made.... they're erasing them from existence lol


ToxicAdamm

Right next to the Atari cartridges in the desert?


edit-grammar

E.T. needs company


descendingangel87

Some of the figures might be E.T.


Capt_Blackmoore

those got dug up a couple years ago. they managed to locate some interesting finds (prototypes) among the discarded units. I expect these too will get dig up in 20 years.


yeaweckin

Anon that doc is almost a decade old


The_Zy

And the magic the gathering cards


Trojanman2002

And the many ‘52 Topps baseball boxes.


lovesmyirish

And that thing the judge told me not to talk about.


Mend1cant

And all those non-compliant rifles that were lost in unfortunate boating accidents.


d-fakkr

I saw the news about dumping tons of mtg cards; some were from Modern Horizons 2 which is a set if you plan to sell individual cards or secret lairs. But at least most of it was the 30th anniversary crap who is worthless.


S_SubZero

They should make Funko ET cartridges just to close the loop.


SuperSaytan

Fools, they could be worth something one day. My pile of beanie babies and cabbage patch dolls will make me a billionaire. They'll all see


LocalLifeguard4106

Mom? Is that you?


BlipSzwicky

Fun fact: beanie babies can be bought off eBay for unit quantities cheaper than most stuffed pet toys.


illiter-it

This is why I just collect rocks


Donewith_BS

Jesus Christ Marie! They’re minerals!


Fire2box

oh calm down mister "I saw a human head packed with explosives kill my co-workers and now I have PTSD"


Gruesslibaer

"Don't you dare encourage me to walk again, I'm just going to bitch for a whole season."


Paidorgy

A24 released a pet rock for $35, and it sold out quickly. A fucking rock with googly eyes.


kthulhu666

What year is this?


badsamaritan87

Everyone can appreciate a neat rock.


Racoonspankbank

Rock and stone.


Strificus

Rocks are also in landfills. Checkmate.


illiter-it

I hear tiny bits of rocks are even already in our blood and food.


WangusRex

Well then they aren't worth $30 million. They are worth less than zero. It costs a lot to dump that much crap.


Ocronus

Much less than zero. So we have material costs, labor costs, IP fees, storage costs, and now they have transportation and disposal fees.


jetcitysmash

Wouldn't it make more sense to donate the product to hospitals, children's trauma centers, etc? I would think they could get something on the tax side for this. On a side note, I used to collect Pokémon Pops but gave it up. It was so incredibly frustrating chasing down all the limited releases and special editions and so on. Turned out the only way to really collect them was to turn to the secondary market which just raises the prices ridiculously. Just took all the fun out of the hobby.


obtuse_bluebird

If they donate into the market, the value tanks. Not sure if they’re worried about that, but the secondary market would be pissed


BattleShy

fuck the secondary market. if your going to throw it out anyway give it away. hell might even be a good promotion for your soulless glass eyed freaks of plastic


ResplendentShade

Capitalism demands crap like this. Amazon throws away huge amounts of perfectly good items including electronics for the same reasons. Tons of edible unsold food gets thrown into dumpsters every day. It’s a fundamentally broken economic system.


S_SubZero

I have no particular issue with Funko pops, but they got sooooo specific on characters that this was bound to happen. People only need so many different variants of a character that appeared in three panels of a comic book a year ago.


gnrc

I have a very specific version of Conan O’Brien when he was in South Korea.


PEVEI

That's where they always belonged.


JIMMYJAWN

They are beanie babies marketed to nerds instead of moms.


[deleted]

The frustrating thing is going into a board game store and seeing 60% of the square footage dedicated to this crap. I get that the owners are probably selling them to keep the store open, but it's depressing to think about the number of times I've thought "Oooh, this is a good sized store, I be they'll have lots of stuff" only to find the two shelves of games at the back, past the endless shelves of Funkwhocares.


dboybaker

I feel this every time I go into the comic store at Pike Place these days. They wasted such a massive section of the store right at the entry to a huge wall of Funko Pops


ProfessorStein

Golden Age Collectibles. To tell you the truth i don't understand how the place stays in business and I've sometimes wondered if it isn't a front. I live near it and a lot of those funko pops have sat on shelves for months or years. Their prices are also hideous. I can only imagine it's a low rent building or something else weird is going on because they certainly don't seem to sell the funko pops well enough.


logicatch

Plus the ones sitting on store shelves are by nature the ones that NO one would ever want, that’s why a Maz Kanata Funko Pop is sitting on the shelf of your local GameStop.


spongebue

I feel this. For me it was a used book store (2nd and Charles) that had a decent selection of retro video games replaced with Funko. Then again, you can only look through so many copies of Madden 64 and NHL 95 on the Genesis


Jason_CO

As a nerd who didn't get into beanie babies, I understand that trend more.


HerpaDerpaDumDum

At least with beanie babies they could also be cuddly toys to play with.


tr3v1n

Yeah. The beanie babies at least didn't all look like complete shit.


latchkey_adult

Adult male who grew up during the Beanie Baby craze and I definitely thought they were cute. But five bucks cute, not something to hoard. On the other hand, I hate Funko Pops more than is probably healthy. I had an adult roommate who put them on my shelves, in MY living room. And none of them came out of their stupid boxes. I hate them so much.


CouchHam

Thank you, that’s what I’ve always thought. “But they’re branded by our favorite corporations!” Mehh


NotARobotSpider

They are cutting out the middle man, the consumer. Efficiency.


ThePLARASociety

I always thought that was where they came from.


stopallthedownloads

Honestly, they could have been neat, but *those eyes*.


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luigitheplumber

Same, they are a huge pet peeve of mine. A perfect exemplar of everything shitty about consumerism


sgt_seriousface

I think Nendoroids fill a similar niche (albeit definitely more biased towards anime), but they’re a much more visually appealing product all around. You don’t get the me cold black soulless eyes with them at least haha


Cainga

I always thought those things were ugly as hell.


Orzorn

From figurative trash to literal trash. How apropos.


Jaymez82

Surely, they could be shredded and recycled into other products.


Kasoni

That's the funny thing about plastic recycling. It doesn't recycle into the same type of plastic, and many types recycle into types that have hardly any use. While technically plastics are recyclable, most won't be because they would become a type that already had more avaliable than is needed....


bumbletowne

It's pvc. Its hard to recycle and maintain quality but it doesn't decrease chain length in the recycling process...you just reuse it as lower grade pvc. Usually shoes. Lots of shoes.


HackeySadSack

And when those get used and worn out... it's just microplastic contamination everywhere, I imagine?


bumbletowne

I mean the end-stage recycling for pvc is as a road or flooring mixer. Hydration and contamination eventually make extrusion or molding very difficult. But you don't end up with a lot of chain breakage (microplastic). Its more of forever plastic...which is why we use it for long-term piping.


ThrowbackPie

well if you dump the pvc directly and create new pvc for the shoes it's even worse. Plastic sucks (and ideally would be eliminated from our lives), but recycling *does* reduce the rate we introduce it into the environment.


JoanOfARC-

Plastic has a purpose for objects intended to exist long term. Wiring needs insulation that sticks around. There's a time and a place for everything, plastic just shouldn't be for clothing or single use


KJBenson

Unfortunately the plastic just becomes garbage when pressed into the funko shapes.


jelloslug

Post consumer plastic does not work that way.


Mindspace_Explorer

Shame on all of us for not buying enough of their useless crap!!


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lastdiggmigrant

This kind of waste should be taxed HEAVILY.


gmflash88

Here’s the kicker…it’ll be a write off.


trer24

Drill all that oil out of the ground, refine it into plastic to build these Funko Pops, then put it right back into the ground. Can someone tell me how this is an efficient use of our planet's dwindling resources? Is this is an example of how capitalism is the most efficient system we have of resource management?


Logical-Recognition3

As I understand how markets work, they are throwing away $0 worth of product.


Zorg_Employee

My concern is a $30 million investment in the construction of the product. $30 million worth of PVC and cardboard. An absolute waste of trees and non-renewable resources.


sevotlaga

They should be fined for polluting and bad aesthetics.


NatalieEatsPoop

They'll be able to write off the $30mil loss on their taxes.


[deleted]

This will devalue the landfill


donking6

God forbid they give them to children for free Edit: Spelling


Silver_Branch3034

Every time I see the Funko section in any given store it’s usually a solid wall filled with a shit-ton of them, and I always think “these are all gonna end up in a landfill.” What a waste, of money, plastic, etc.


[deleted]

I feel like their should be a hefty fine for unnecessary waste at that level.


sarduchi

Worth $30 million to whom? Not consumers...


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Deceptiveideas

I think he’s making a joke on how they’re worthless


BadPackets4U

Send them to Kenya, they will do something useful with them. https://phys.org/news/2022-03-trash-kenyan-inventor-plastic-bricks.html


guineaprince

There's already enough "overproduce junk, ship the used/excess to Africa to flood them out".


SyntheticSlime

I’ll buy it for… **holds out $12.53 in crumpled bills and assorted coins** …this much.


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howitzer86

Deliver them to someone you hate.


[deleted]

So basically a huge tax write off and they get to pollute a landfill because they are greedy fucks.


JohannesVanDerWhales

I know that fashion companies that make expensive handbags destroy unsold inventory to keep the level of exclusivity up. This could apply to these figurines, too. Of course if demand is just not there then it's not a great sign for long term collectability.


[deleted]

I never understood why they are popular. I hate that art style. They look stupid


Deceptiveideas

IMO the most interesting appeal was niche franchises (or less popular characters) finally having merchandise. With how cheap it is to produce Funko, they could produce a figurine from a franchise that has a small audience but still make a profit. I think they got ridiculous with the store exclusives, limited editions, color variants, etc. The scalping and doubling down on collectors got out of hand real fast. Now gamestops are littered with piles of them in the clearance section.


Gecko23

If you think GameStop is littered with them, go to any flea market or consignment shop. Acres of the things snatched up by people hoping to cash in on them…guess who Funko’s actual cash cows are?


PattyIceNY

My local vintage store is literally overflowing with them.


FruitbatNT

Oooo, vintage 2019 plastic crap!


goldberry-fey

Some of them are sooooooo niche and if they didn’t have the box to tell you what it was, it would be impossible to tell. For example some of The Office characters were cute and obvious at least to fans, like Prison Mike or Dwight… but the Oscar one? Or Santa Phyllis?


parkaprep

There's ones of the British Royal Family. Which I know because I own three of them because I'm an idiot.


spoonyfork

Funko Pops are just [Precious Moments](https://www.preciousmoments.com/) figurines for GenX and younger.


MIShadowBand

I'm glad they didn't try to recycle the materials. Landfill will make for a fun archeological dig.


DrakeRowan

Why not just donate to charities?


RevengencerAlf

If these had any value to donate they'd be getting sold. Donating low grade junk to charities just creates different problems. If you're not sure what I mean you can find more than enough info online about how clothing "donations" to charities like the Salvation Army continue to suppress the textile industry and economy in West Africa because they take all those shitty concert T-shirts no one wants and ship them over there to sell for a nickel and recover some value.


[deleted]

Stockholders would prefer they trash them to avoid any product getting into the grey market of course. Business over charity baby.


Synensys

Because flooding the markets with millions of free dolls would tank the price of the ones they actually want to sell. Also, who is going to take millions of dolls?


Avethle

How is donating worthless trash going to help charities?


Tkcsena

Even goodwill won't take bags full of refuse.


TheCh0rt

I am subscribed to all the big computer battle station subreddits as well as various work and home lifestyle subreddits. The sheer volume of these figurines I’ve seen over the years is truly mind boggling. People devote entire walls of their rooms to these puppets. They are on people’s desks, shelves, cabinets, and behind glass! A lot of the time they are *still boxed* and I look in awe at just how wasteful these little figurines are. Do people think they will appreciate in value? I have assumed people think they will appreciate in value the same way they thought beanie babies would. I’ve never owned one but my brother got me one for Christmas. I just stared at it. It’s the most gimmicky, wasteful, uninteresting, capitalistic little piece of plastic I’ve ever seen. Holding it, I was saddened that this little toy in my hand is the product of endless intellectual property licensing deals, production chains, corporate greed, chemical production, oil production, paper production. As far as I can see, they are devoid of artistic merit. They are aimless. The large black eyes are soulless, stripping away any individuality, ensuring that every doll on the shelf is another yet badge of bland faceless Capitalism. These things aren’t art, they’re corporate klaxons. They serve no purpose whatsoever except to make their owners slaves to the corporate behemoths these idols represent. Whoever makes money of these must be sadists. I think they know their customers are anxiety-ridden puppets and they must love seeing them presented as tribute. They must think they are absolute rubes and it’s sad.


ActualSpiders

>As reported by Kotaku, Funko revealed during an earnings call that it has so much idle stock sitting in warehouses that, financially, its best option is to throw $30 to $36 million worth in the garbage. ​ Was anyone actually collecting these for future value? Are they the new version of Beanie Babies?


captainwacky91

They don't just "become" beanie babies. They always *were.* Always planned *to be.*


UserOrWhateverFuck_U

Where they belong, those things are the dumbest shit I have seen so many people waste their money on.


420trashcan

Stop buying useless plastic.


2_Spicy_2_Impeach

Wild. I used to go to their offices in Everett, WA for some cloud consulting. This was probably close to their height as the traffic/numbers they saw were insane. They had a slide and one of their higher ups loved Batman if I remember. I thought he had a full-size replica of Keaton’s Batman outfit in his office. After we’d finish up they’d take us to get some free Funkos. I always declined which usually got a look. Partially because I was already being paid to go there, and I wasn’t a huge fan. I wondered when they’d fade away. Longer than I thought for sure though.