For the longest time, I was good. I am a geek who likes collecting but I know my weakness. All I had to do was not buy the first one and there wouldn’t be a snowball effect. It’s like Lays potato chips. As long as you don’t eat that first chip, you don’t end up eating the whole bag.
And then I moved to the west coast and The Flickcast’s WallE and the Internet’s Matt Raub ruined it for me. I was surrounded on all sides by people with these little bodies with big heads and beady eyes and before I knew it, it was too late. On a Saturday afternoon Comic Book Pub Crawl, I made my first purchase. An Alien and a Predator. And I thought I could leave it with just those two on my desk. But I was wrong.
The next week, I went into my comic book store to pick up my weekly stack and see they released a He-Man set so I figure the other half of my desk needs a Skeletor and Hordak. Fast forward a few more weeks and I am in the process of a TMNT set, Game of Thrones set and the first group of Power Rangers. I even downloaded the Toy Collector app to my iPhone to help me keep track of figures I want just in case I somehow forgot.
Funko has done the worst thing you can do to geeks: Give them something new to collect. Something that is high quality and affordable and resembles another franchise they already love, the geek world will eat it up. Those evil bastards. And now, just a week before leaving for SDCC, I know part of my suitcase is going to be filled up with more Pop figures on the trip home. I may have to bring a second suitcase just to accommodate, especially since now that I am hooked I am going to have to get some of the SDCC 2013 exclusives!
Addiction to collecting is something we are all used to in the geek world and while I proudly display my collection now both at my office and in the apartment, I know this isn’t going to end well. I give words of caution to those curious about Pops and expect to see you at the Pops Anonymous meetings we will have to begin holding in the weeks following SDCC.
Um, you can send them to me if you don’t want them to take up room in your house. 🙂