$36 Million Worth of Funko Pop! Figures to Be Dumped in Landfills

$36 Million Worth of Funko Pop! Figures to Be Dumped in Landfills,A catastrophic miscalculation by Funko Inc. will take its toll on our environment. A sudden drop in demand left the company with a huge excess stock of Funko Pop figures, and they will reportedly go straight to the landfill. Rather than trying to sell the plastic dolls, the company will write off [...]

$36 Million Worth of Funko Pop! Figures to Be Dumped in Landfills

A catastrophic miscalculation by Funko Inc. will take its toll on our environment. A sudden drop in demand left the company with a huge excess stock of Funko Pop figures, and they will reportedly go straight to the landfill. Rather than trying to sell the plastic dolls, the company will write off this overstock in its taxes and condemn them to landfills.

Funko Pop figurines have taken the world by storm in recent years, but that storm was doomed to die down eventually. Reporters from Kotaku were the first to note that Funko Inc.’s recent earnings call mentioned a massive write-off in the neighborhood of $30 million to $36 million. The company will get some of the money for this wasted inventory back at tax season, and in exchange will free up a lot of warehouse space by disposing of these figures. A video from a waste management site later went viral showing piles of boxed Funko Pops dropped unceremoniously in the dirt.

Funk pops found at landfill to be destroyed by in funkopop

Funko Pops were first released in 2010 and have slowly risen to ubiquity since then. The vinyl figures depict characters from all throughout pop culture in a nearly uniform style derived from Japanese “Chibi” aesthetics. According to a report by PC Gamer, the figures saw a huge spike in popularity in 2020 when many people suddenly found themselves working from home with fresh disposable income an a lot of boredom.

Now, the company has reportedly seen a corresponding drop in interest that it wasn’t prepared for. At an average price of $11 per figure, this $30 million overstock would amount to about 2.7 million toys abruptly dumped in the trash without ever sitting on a shelf or gracing a cubicle wall. Many people were already cynical about Funko Pops as it is, so this story has generated some particularly snide commentary on social media.

“Funko way overproduces pops. They dumped millions of overstock in a landfill and their net losses last year was over 45 million dollars. They are going beanie baby real fast,” one person tweeted. Meanwhile, many fans were furious that these figures were being thrown out rather than donated. On Reddit, one person commented: “Donations, man. Fucking children hospitals, charities.. whatever,” while another added: “I mean they could have been nice to the community and just handed some out as prizes. But this isn’t bad news for anyone collecting POPs. It means they are lowering production. Your pops will gain more value overtime.”

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