How'd you get started collecting Funko Pops?

Postby **kevintheomanharris** » Sat Sep 09, 2017 10:00 am

First pops were because my comic shop advertised they had Back to the Future pops.

Coworker is a big collector so she told me about Fundays. I went. And I got obsessed.

Postby **Mister Piggy Wiggy** » Sat Sep 09, 2017 11:41 am

Good question! I saw a bunch a few years ago and the desire slowly grew until I decided to buy a few. The rest is history.

Postby **Grimmsley** » Sat Sep 09, 2017 2:00 pm

JordanAtSyfy wrote:Hi! I'm a journalist — the features editor at Syfy! — working on a story about the Funko Pops craze. One part of the story is how people initially got hooked on Funko Pops, and how many they have now.

Would you mind telling me how you got started collecting them, how many you have now, and how much you'd estimate you've spent on them?

I'll go first: I started buying them for my girlfriend after seeing them at various conventions. We only have a few so far, but there's a Funko pop store in NYC that we will visit soon!

If you'd rather do it over email, I'm at Jordan.Zakarin at NBCUni dot com.

Thanks!

I saw them around for a while but never started, then it was sdcc 15 and I saw the crystal blue Heisenberg and I finally decided to start. Went to hot topic and found 3 on the shelf I was so happy and just like that I'm up to 2 full shelfs

Postby **BigEvilDad** » Sat Sep 09, 2017 4:29 pm

I blame my brother, he got me tix to fundays last year, and then a bunch of us went to fundays again this year, now its becoming a part of our SDCC tradition.
Hopefully we'll get tix again this year! This year the SDCC dorb was so awesome, i hope that they do that one from now on... it would be a great tradition.

Postby **Ajc619** » Sat Sep 09, 2017 6:07 pm

I just walked into a comic book shop and spotted the pops. Roger Rabbit was the first one I purchased.

Postby **Unknown_User** » Sat Sep 09, 2017 6:33 pm

JordanAtSyfy wrote:Hi! I'm a journalist — the features editor at Syfy! — working on a story about the Funko Pops craze. One part of the story is how people initially got hooked on Funko Pops, and how many they have now.

Would you mind telling me how you got started collecting them, how many you have now, and how much you'd estimate you've spent on them?

I'll go first: I started buying them for my girlfriend after seeing them at various conventions. We only have a few so far, but there's a Funko pop store in NYC that we will visit soon!

If you'd rather do it over email, I'm at Jordan.Zakarin at NBCUni dot com.

Thanks!

I got started collecting Funko Pops maybe 3 or 4 years back. My first one was DC Comics Number 43, Harley Quinn with Pop Gun. A big Harley Quinn fan and when I heard there were other variants I made it a goal to collect them all. From there I took notice of other Funko pops and my love for Pops grew from there.

I don't have a lot like other Funko Funatics. I think my total count is somewhere around 60 or so Funko Pops. My whole collection, with the exception of the Harleys, occupies a corner space in my room. The Harleys are in a pyramid configuration on my desk.

I think I've probably spent a total of $1000 - $1200 for my collection. Some of the figures are pricey but damn do they not look good.

Postby **Kenjutsu763** » Mon Sep 11, 2017 8:30 am

The first one for me was Elvis Stitch. I just liked Stitch and loved Elvis, so I thought, why not.
Then my sister got me a ton of Game of Thrones ones for Christmas one year. I just set them aside, as they weren't anything I was interested in collecting,

EDIT: Correction: it actually started to pick up after Guardians of the Galaxy came out, and I really wanted a set of the crew when I was at SDCC. I then proceeded to go from vendor to vendor until I had a set. After that I continued to but the MTG set, and it spiraled out of control.

Postby **throneofgames** » Mon Sep 11, 2017 9:20 am

ETphonehome wrote:
throneofgames wrote:
ETphonehome wrote:Started when someone gave me a pop as a present.

And now you're hooked aren't you?!

Kind of, I started looking at other lines and bought a few more than I expected

Same here, my original intent was only to collect a couple of lines, but that turned into easily over 1,000 over the past few years.

Postby **Force951** » Mon Sep 11, 2017 10:29 am

My wife and I were at Frys picking up a birthday gift and ran across a Tyrion Lannister Pop and she had to pick it up. A couple months later at Comic Con she found the rest of the first GOT run, had to buy them all and was hooked after that.

Postby **Leechinyuan** » Mon Sep 11, 2017 12:40 pm

My 1st pop is tmnt truck from a friend
Find it cute... and keep buying.....

Postby **kadeyfish** » Mon Sep 11, 2017 1:33 pm

One day they popped up on my recommendations on Amazon. I thought they were adorable and start a wish list of all the ones I thought were super cute. Then one day, my sister's dog got out and I had to drive all over between 3 cities to help find her dog. Thankfully we found him and a few days later there was an Amazon package at my door. My sister was so grateful that I had dropped what I was doing to drive around and help find her dog that she had bought me some items off my Amazon wishlist as a thank you. There was a Dancing Baby Groot in that box and I was like, "Welp, guess I'm collecting these now." I had no idea that it was going to develop into what it is now. I now have just under 300 (with more currently on the way) and have spent probably around $1000.00 on my collection since most of mine have been given to me as gifts.

Postby **sromo006** » Mon Sep 11, 2017 2:27 pm

I love geekypeeples story and its great to have him in the community, including my local community. I think for a lot of people Funko came out with characters we related to or had some connection to and wanted to show that off or a representation of that love and connection. For me it was that they came out with characters for DC and Marvel that didnt really come out or if they did they were these really expensive elaborate figures that I would have to pick one to buy. I got started by one coming in a LootCrate and thought it was cool. Then I got some batman figures for the girlfriend. That sucked me into looking what they made and I started getting figures that werent common, like white lanterns, phoenix, stealth iron man, ect and still to this day only get the ones I like or have a fondness of and that has led to owning hundreds of these pops ha.

Postby **deejaylunchbox** » Mon Sep 11, 2017 2:52 pm

Man i remember i knew about pops because of Franalations. I knew him from street wear days on fairfax and saw that he was collecting these things. I had started to see them more and more @ HT and a few cons but didn't give them a second guess.

I was heavy in to 12" figures from Hot toys and had just scored a Bank Robber Joker HT figure. I had seen the pop version and decided to get it. Kicking myself for not buying more than one. Few months later i went to Wondercon 2015 and got an early release stay puft marshmallow man and the Crow.

When it all went "downhill" was Force Friday 2015. With TFA hype at an all time high with me i want all out looking for the pops. 2 years and 300 pops later i'm just here trying to take it easy on buying frivolously and loving how Funko has eveolved. I've made hella friends, am part of Funko Fiends and attended Fundays. So far loving this Funko ride.

Postby **GetLostYouPsycho** » Mon Sep 11, 2017 3:40 pm

I bought my first Pops back in 2011, I think. I bought the first Jack and Sally Pops from Nightmare Before Christmas. I actually only bought those two and then didn't bother looking at what else Funko was making (a decision I sorely regret now) until maybe 2014 or so. At the time I was really only interested in NBC stuff, and thought that Funko was just making Disney characters since the only place I'd ever seen them was at the Disney store. Oh, if only I'd thought to look them up online after buying those two..

Postby **ETphonehome** » Wed Sep 13, 2017 2:04 am

throneofgames wrote:
ETphonehome wrote:
throneofgames wrote:And now you're hooked aren't you?!

Kind of, I started looking at other lines and bought a few more than I expected

Same here, my original intent was only to collect a couple of lines, but that turned into easily over 1,000 over the past few years.

I can feel the itch already

Postby **JJLecaros** » Wed Sep 13, 2017 2:57 am

sucker for glow in the dark things

Postby **throneofgames** » Wed Sep 13, 2017 10:02 am

JJLecaros wrote:sucker for glow in the dark things

Same! When you light them all up together it makes for awesome photos too!

Postby **JJLecaros** » Wed Sep 13, 2017 4:46 pm

throneofgames wrote:
JJLecaros wrote:sucker for glow in the dark things

Same! When you light them all up together it makes for awesome photos too!

yup....

Postby **Swatrob** » Wed Sep 13, 2017 5:29 pm

At sdcc when the booth was really small and most of the products were bobbleheads. Funko was always one of my first stops on preview night, made sure to buy at least one thing every year. Kept going on and on until pops came out, I don't collect everything they make but I dabble in a lot of stuff.

Postby **[llO_oll]7** » Wed Sep 13, 2017 5:35 pm

Hung out a lot with a friend who was a collector. Whenever we went out, we always ended up going to a few stores looking for pops. I eventually saw one I wanted to buy, took like 3 or 4 months, but yeah after that first purchase I started to get the eye for pops.

Postby **WildberryPOPtarts33** » Wed Sep 13, 2017 5:42 pm

I got started when I went to a local convention and I was on the hunt for anything relating to Attack on Titan. They just happened to have a couple AoT pops there for sale and I had to buy them. Then, my friend said that there were tons more figures of characters that I loved and that we should look into buying more of them. Then it was a deep and dark spiral to where I ended up today lol

. On a real note, collecting pops gave me something to take my mind off of things as I was in a bad place, so it helped me out in a big way in that regard but it also caused me to really plummet down the Funko product buying chasm!

Postby **ALEXizzKING** » Wed Sep 13, 2017 5:42 pm

nothing really special tbh i just walked into a store that i never been in with my mom and they had like 4 huge walls of them. so i grabbed 2 call of duty ones and the addiction never stopped

Postby **PhoenixForce** » Wed Sep 13, 2017 5:47 pm

JordanAtSyfy wrote:Hi! I'm a journalist — the features editor at Syfy! — working on a story about the Funko Pops craze. One part of the story is how people initially got hooked on Funko Pops, and how many they have now.

Would you mind telling me how you got started collecting them, how many you have now, and how much you'd estimate you've spent on them?

I'll go first: I started buying them for my girlfriend after seeing them at various conventions. We only have a few so far, but there's a Funko pop store in NYC that we will visit soon!

If you'd rather do it over email, I'm at Jordan.Zakarin at NBCUni dot com.

Thanks!

Hi Jordan!
I started collecting pops buy picking up the Dark Phoenix pop, my favorite character of all time from The X-Men!
From there I grabbed beast, another fellow X-Man. I was familiar with the brand but never made the move to collecting. In fact, my husband and I were at SDCC a year or so before, when you were able to just walk into the Funko booth and thought they were super cute but didn't pick anything up. I tried my best to get him to pick up the Flocked Chewbacca since he is a Star Wars fan. He thought about it and then didn't do it. I was looking at the metallic Captain America and thought it's cool, I should get it for my desk. Again, I didn't do it. Sigh. If I only knew back then what I know now.

The year Dark Phoenix was released we were about to get into the Funko booth at SDCC and the metallic Deadpool and Red Hulk helped further launch my Marvel pop collection. I have made some great friends through collecting and have got a lot of my friends into collecting. We even drove 22 hours straight to get to the Everett, WA grand opening from California. You don't make road trips like that unless your'e really good friends!!

Postby **throneofgames** » Thu Sep 14, 2017 10:30 am

Swatrob wrote:At sdcc when the booth was really small and most of the products were bobbleheads. Funko was always one of my first stops on preview night, made sure to buy at least one thing every year. Kept going on and on until pops came out, I don't collect everything they make but I dabble in a lot of stuff.

You probably have a lot of their earlier stuff then huh?

Postby **Fugly16** » Thu Sep 14, 2017 11:07 am

Hi Jordan! Can't wait to read your article.

I was given a Alan & Baby Carlos for Christmas years back when my girlfriend saw it in a store somewhere. She knew I loved the character from the movie. She also got me Gandalf because of my love for the LOTR movies.

Ever since then I became completely enamored by the variations and diversity in characters the company makes pops of. That has led into going to conventions looking for the ones I wanted which then led to meeting others that share my passion for this hobby and years later I'm sitting at nearly 700 of these items in my collection and just as many memories of how/when I got them.

The community is just as large of a draw for me as the collectibles themselves.

Postby **Kaosu** » Thu Sep 14, 2017 12:06 pm

It all started with a subscription to lootcrate and the batman Joker pop. After that everything went downhill and now I have a room full of pops/minis/hikaris lol

Postby **Nemesis989** » Thu Sep 14, 2017 12:32 pm

My wife and I went to Conan at SDCC and got a funny little toy at the end, the rest is history

Postby **Legion Of Boom** » Thu Sep 14, 2017 12:48 pm

I've always been a collector...from trading cards to action figures to comics. In 2012 I started seeing POP! figures at local comic book shops and at a few retail stores...Naturally seeing all the different characters and licenses perked my interest. I bought a few Star Wars, DC and Marvel here and there, but what really did me in was the 2013 SDCC Headless Ned Stark exclusive. Once I bought that, the flood gates opened. I haven't really counted how many I have, but I'm guessing that it's well over 600 Funko items now and I've probably spent way too much lol

Postby **gv4suns** » Thu Sep 14, 2017 2:04 pm

Mine started about 3 or 4 years ago with my Marty McFly Pop. I believe I saw it at Hot Topic. I am a big fan of Back to the Future so I thought this was a pretty cool piece to own. Then I started collecting the Breaking Bad Pops. It wasn't until a few years later that I got a lot more serious in collecting them. Typically every time I go shopping I am hunting for Pops. I almost have the complete set of Rick and Morty and the rest are from either Harry Potter, Marvel, DC, or Stranger Things. I have one prototype and am currently hunting for a Metallic Buzz Lightyear. It's like an addiction buying these. It's so satisfying when you finally find the Funko Pop you've been looking for. I estimate that I have spent around $1000 on my Pops.

Postby **becca69** » Thu Sep 14, 2017 4:18 pm

I actually collect books and thought it would be cute to put Dany Targaryen in my George RR Martin bookcase. That was a dark descent into POP collecting. I do try to collect only POPs that I have an existing collection of, in some form or other (Stephen King, LOTR/Hobbit, Outlander, etc). It's nice to see my first POP is one of the more valuable pieces I own.

These are my current AGOT POPS.

Postby **pauly20powers** » Thu Sep 14, 2017 4:22 pm

My first Pop was Phil Coulson. After that, I was hooked.

I just liked how they looked and decidea I needed some.

Postby **JeffylikesApples** » Thu Sep 14, 2017 4:26 pm

My girlfriend convinced me to join her for Fundays this year at SDCC and I had a blast. So then I surprised her and took her to the Grand Opening, and I am now hooked. The people in this community are so nice, the staff I've met have all been so nice, and awesome products too!

Postby **Jade-Rex** » Fri Sep 15, 2017 9:58 pm

becca69 wrote:I actually collect books and thought it would be cute to put Dany Targaryen in my George RR Martin bookcase. That was a dark descent into POP collecting. I do try to collect only POPs that I have an existing collection of, in some form or other (Stephen King, LOTR/Hobbit, Outlander, etc). It's nice to see my first POP is one of the more valuable pieces I own.

These are my current AGOT POPS.

That is a really cool collection; the books and the pops.

Postby **Swatrob** » Sun Sep 17, 2017 11:01 pm

throneofgames wrote:
Swatrob wrote:At sdcc when the booth was really small and most of the products were bobbleheads. Funko was always one of my first stops on preview night, made sure to buy at least one thing every year. Kept going on and on until pops came out, I don't collect everything they make but I dabble in a lot of stuff.

You probably have a lot of their earlier stuff then huh?

I do, but most of it is stuff no one is interested in, fosters home, happy tree friends stuff. I got a few things that look like pops but are in clam shells, I sold one to fund other collecting

Postby **tonychen2121** » Sun Sep 17, 2017 11:47 pm

So many cool stories here. Love reading all of these!!

Postby **throneofgames** » Mon Sep 18, 2017 9:47 am

Swatrob wrote:
throneofgames wrote:
Swatrob wrote:At sdcc when the booth was really small and most of the products were bobbleheads. Funko was always one of my first stops on preview night, made sure to buy at least one thing every year. Kept going on and on until pops came out, I don't collect everything they make but I dabble in a lot of stuff.

You probably have a lot of their earlier stuff then huh?

I do, but most of it is stuff no one is interested in, fosters home, happy tree friends stuff. I got a few things that look like pops but are in clam shells, I sold one to fund other collecting

Clamshells?!? Good lord those are worth a ton! That was before pops were even pops lol

. I always loved the GITD Green Lantern from the clamshells...really awesome piece!

Postby **throneofgames** » Mon Sep 18, 2017 9:48 am

JeffylikesApples wrote:My girlfriend convinced me to join her for Fundays this year at SDCC and I had a blast. So then I surprised her and took her to the Grand Opening, and I am now hooked. The people in this community are so nice, the staff I've met have all been so nice, and awesome products too!

I can easily believe how Fundays would have gotten you hooked - it's an event like no other!!!

Postby **Stu** » Mon Sep 18, 2017 10:00 am

I first noticed Pops! at my LCS in 2012 or 2013, the store had changed hands to a new owner who was trying to expand the offerings of what the previous owner had offered. He had a stack of Pops and Wacky Wobblers, I was interested, but I was already spending too much money on comics, so I resisted the urge. A few years later, after some bad business decisions, the comic book store closed and so did my comic book habit. Fast forward to summer of 2015, I was walking through Barnes & Noble, I took the plunge and bought Rocket & Groot from GOTG....from there I have been hooked.

Postby **wickedwahine11** » Mon Sep 18, 2017 10:47 am

The first one I wanted was Severus Snape, just because I love the character, and thought he was adorable, and I asked for him for my birthday. Between the day I asked, I decided as a huge GoT fan, I wanted my two favorite characters Cersei Lannister (second version), Dany in the white dress, and the Iron Throne. I put those in my office and said my mood could be ascertained by whichever queen was currently sitting atop the throne.

Then, I decided I wanted Tyrion with his goblet because I love the line, "I drink and I know things," then I couldn't resist a Mr. Bean custom, then a Xena custom, and then I ended up here today. Now I keep adding shelves to my home office for Pops, and am rapidly running out of wall space! :eek:

Postby **froyomorada** » Mon Sep 18, 2017 11:42 am

I started buying Pops when I was still collecting Master of the Universe, I would buy any MOTU which includes Pops - although at that time, I was collecting the Mattel Action Figures more.
I would buy a few pops here and there for myself and as gifts. So from 2013-2016, all Pops I had were the MOTU set, Pink Ranger (which was a gift from my officemate), Edna Mode.
I had Peter Pan before but it got lost when I brought it on our hiking.

Fast Forward to July 2016 - I attended a wedding and the bride's gift to me for my participation as one of the grooms men is a Katniss Wedding Gown.
Since Mattel announced they're stopping production of MOTU figures, I was looking for something else to collect. I wanted to buy a Peter Pan pop again and it was already high valued. That's when I realized that Pops have come a long way since and has more products than just Cartoon/Comics characters.

I suddenly got addicted buying and now I have over 1700+ pops and dorbz lol

It's the combination of the nostalgia of my childhood and the movies/show/characters I enjoy as an adult that had me collecting still
Also, the community has been great not just in this forums but also our local group in atlanta. I have met a lot of new friends that I didnt experience on other collector community

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