Adventures in Plastic; my journey through FunkoLand

Two years ago, my first Funko Pop purchase was a 10 unit "blind buy" package.  A blind buy is when you buy a collectible but have no idea which one you're getting.  The set of 10 I bought on Amazon was at a great price, something like $40.  Considering these things have a MSRP of $10.99 each, getting 10 at $4 each is a steal.  When you buy a set as large as this blind, the only promise is that there'll be no duplicates, other than that, you could get anything.

This same deal is currently $42.99 on Amazon (with a MSRP of $129.99).

I think I got a good deal.  I thought five of the 10 were pretty great and even in the lower half, there were only two that I had no interest in.

The five good ones were: Riddler, the Predator Hound, a Gremlin, Bev Marsh from "It," and Amphibian Man from "The Shape of Water."

The five I wasn't so crazy about were Adam Bomb, Phillip, Fin Balor, Newt Scamander and Frodo Baggins.  None of these figures were terrible but except for Frodo, I simply didn't know who any of them were.

After that first blind buy, the gloves were off and I was completely in love with these things but whenever I looked up any specific ones from my favorite shows or films, they were prohibitively expensive.  Prices for figures from Sherlock, Twin Peaks, Hannibal and Buffy were through the roof so I approached Amazon from a more strategic angle, I simply bought all the ones I liked that were less than $7.

This was my new mission; despite their $10.99 MRSP, I refused to pay more than $6.99 for any 4" Pop.  

And in looking through my past purchases, I am more than pleased to see how many of my figures have increased in price since I bought them.

Despite that, the bottom line must be that you should buy whatever makes you happy.  Trying to guess what'll increase in value, well good luck with that.  Myself, I just buy my favorite things and actors that fall below a certain price threshold.  Sorry, but I'm just not willing to pay more than $7 for these stupid things.  Unless they're really, really special.

So after that first blind buy, I bought one or two, here and there.  Most of the Marvel figures I loved were way too expensive out of the gate but I grabbed what I could.

Over the course of a year, I picked up:

My favorite out of all of those is "Casual Thanos."  Him looking so weak and feeble reminds me of the most powerful scene from "Endgame."  Owning the weak Thanos is also a great compliment to my next round of purchases, the super, uber 6-inchers!

Just because of how cheap it was, Eitri from "Infinity War" caught my eye from the moment I saw it.  Besides the low price, it was a character played by Peter Dinklage, who was the single best character from the entire run of Game of Thrones.  

The appeal of Eitri continues; he was one of the best visual gags in "Infinity War" (casting Dinklage as the one giant in the film... well, that's funny).

Besides how inexpensive he was ($6-something instead of the $24.99 MRSP), when I actually received this and saw how big the packaging was compared to the normies, I was smitten.

I immediately went back to the Amazon site and looked up all the other 6" Pops they offered.

Because I already had Josh Baskin on the toy piano, I couldn't resist Zoltare for only $10:

And because I'm such a Marvel fanboy, just seeing these extra-large figures selling for so much less than their MRSP, I didn't think twice before I threw these into my shopping basket:

After the big boys, we're almost up to date.  There's the three Wonder Woman.  I bought these without looking at the individual names or boxes too closely, just the fact that they were Wonder Woman and under $7 was good enough for me.  When I got them and saw that they're all from the new upcoming sequel, that was just sweet icing on the cake:

...and the cast of "Us:"