I wound up lingering around the house today in lieu of some planned activities because of unexpected car troubles.
Instead I did some chores around the house.
Mainly blowing through this mountain of laundry I’ve avoided for too long.
While doing so I had to confront that age-old question of what you do when something you’ve worn for a long time is pretty much beyond repair.
That white shirt I featured up above has been one of my pajama shirts since 2014.
I can tell you that specifically because it was a promotional gift I got at a baseball game in San Diego with a bunch of my old High Tide coworkers.
The game (and I couldn’t say what game it was because I was terrible about using Facebook — he said as though he’s any better now) was played up as an event to coincide with the Journalism Education Association conference happening that week.
We were in the city for that conference’s write-off competition, where I happened to win this award that’s still hanging up in my room:
Good times.
Somehow that shirt continued to be huge on me for the next five years, but it has served me well in the realm of Dream Land.
Until about two weeks ago.
A small hole in the seam just underneath the shirt’s armpit tore far wider than I could have anticipated. Not just along the seam, but inward toward my sternum. My family leveed some complaints but I mostly dissuaded them under the conviction that it shouldn’t matter for something I’m just sleeping in.
Now that I’ve had time to mull it over, however… The shirt is not the most flattering thing in its current condition. Pulling it out of that pile of clothes really hit home.
So that means it’s about time I got rid of it.
By all accounts it’s just a shirt, and the objective part of me has no problem tossing it aside.
Yet I think it’s worth taking a moment to archive the story behind the shirt. Because it may just be sewn-up pieces of fabric, but it’s sewn-up pieces of fabric with a backstory that I recall with a certain amount of fondness and nostalgia.
If you can really consider five years a truly ‘nostalgic’ period.
Hopefully writing up this little account can give all of you at home the chance to reflect on some fond memories toward your possessions as well. Because if you ask me, it’s important to remember that it isn’t really the goods that make us happy.
It’s the tales behind them that do.
So if you have any good memories you want to keep alive about innocuous goods, let me know. I think it’d be a fun little conversation to start.
Our YouTube community has reached amazing heights, and I couldn’t be more proud of you all for helping me get to the coveted 1 subscriber milestone.
That’s why I’ve decided to launch a new project.
I’ll be going toe-to-toe with industry greats like the Game Grumps and Markiplier through my brand new gameplay channel: T1meslayer plays.
As you know I’m a huge Nintendo fanatic, so that’s going to be my primary focus. In fact, we’re starting off with one of my favorite titles on the GameBoy Advance. Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones (2004).
To help stand out from my competitors, I’m taking a new approach to YouTube gaming that I like to call “non-chronological let’s plays.”
We’ve all seen the first levels of certain games played a dozen times as new channels start to play, only to collapse under the weight of mediocrity before they get to the end.
I’m going to solve that problem by starting with Episode 5 and then jumping around.
Thanks so much for sticking by me during this turbulent time as I get ready to graduate. Like, comment and subscribe to see what’s coming next!
Alright. Obviously I don’t have a gaming channel.
Sorry to disappoint those of you who might be interested in watching that cringe-fest.
This let’s play video is actually one of the final assignments for my Gaming in American Culture class. We had to essentially parody the YouTube video game scene to try and convey some ideas we’re focusing on in our papers.
It was a nightmare actually putting this together (as one might expect when trying to pull an 18-minute video off of their iPhones to edit on a 10-year-old laptop), but I actually really like how it came out?
Like sure, I’m terrible on camera. And technology was so difficult that I skipped blog writing yesterday. But I cut out dead air and added an editorial commentary track to inject some humor, I think it’s a nice piece.
Nice enough to share publicly, at least.
Yet sharing the video is bittersweet. This is literally my penultimate college assignment. All I have left is the final paper for this same class.
Today was my last day of college ever — and it also happened to be my Gaming in American Culture.
Came in for my last undergraduate class ever @csuf, where I’m watching people talk about video games and sports while eating pizza.
Learned about some interesting things from these presentations. In sports especially, like the existence of pickleball and the beer mile.
The latter of which makes me happy that I don’t drink.
“Bittersweet” is really the best way I can describe my feelings. I’m happy to move onto the next stage in my life, especially since I can share the celebration with my family — particularly my grandparents from Florida, who both flew in together for the first time since my Bar Mitzvah.
Almost 10 years ago. Yikes.
But at the same time I have genuinely enjoyed my time in Academia, and the idea of finding a real job still terrifies me.
You don’t have to worry yourself with that part of my psyche, however. For the next couple days I’ll probably be posting all sorts of positive things on social media to try and convince you all that my life is nothing but wonderful.
Because that’s really what social media is all about, isn’t it?
Editor’s Note: On March 26, 2019 I made a few corrections to dates throughout this post after the RUHS Archivist, Therese Martinez, offered some notes.
Now the piece should hopefully be even more accurate.
Sometimes work can take you to unexpectedly interesting places.
In my perpetual search for Gladeo interviewees (because internship hours), today I took my Mom’s advice and spent time with the Archivist at my alma mater, Redondo Union High School.
Apparently I’m just gravitating toward the school this weekend, be it for theatre or history.
About two years after I graduated in 2015, an old storage space for janitorial goods was converted into this fancy Alumni House.
The school has been around since ~1905, so there’s a whole lot of alum to keep track of.
But more importantly, the Alumni House became a space for memorabilia — old class photos, yearbooks, furniture, mascot costumes, etc.
Much less dilapidated now.
Since this wasn’t a place when I attended high school, I never got to check any of it out.
Now that I did, I’m pretty upset that everything wasn’t so open and available back when I was working on the High Tide. Would’ve loved to peruse for a story or two!
Some of the archived pieces go way back to the 1920’s.
Like this mirror, a senior present for the school from the class of 1925:
In that same vein, there were publications like yearbooks and newspapers from around the 20s, as the High Tide has been in business since 1920.
Old versions of the yearbook, called “The Pilot” (which had even earlier publications going back to 1915), were particularly cool because a lot of them had student signatures from all those years ago:
It’s pretty incredible to not just see pictures of folks long since entering the cradle of old age, but to see what and how they wrote to one another.
Gotta love an age where everyone wrote in clean, precise cursive.
And where nobody wrote “HAGS” because they weren’t enmeshed in a culture of shorthand acronyms and emoji that have cursed our modern, digital age into regressed diction.
… Sorry, did I say that out loud? My old man is showing.
A few other specific items on display were of note.
Like this class photo from 1921 — the oldest one we have available, apparently:
Or the old met version of our mascot, Sammy the Seahawk.
Apparently dubbed “Scary Sammy” because… Well…
Look at him.
That is a terrifying mascot costume.
Though alongside the old costume, I also found out that the first time RUHS received the “sea hawk” as its mascot was in the banner of a High Tide issues from 1926.
A lot of the other things around the Alumni House were just as cool, but in the interest of not having a 3,000 word post I think it’s safe to share the rest in a neat little slideshow:
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However, don’t think this is the last time you’ll hear from me about the Alumni House.
I’ve already started the gears turning to get a video interview with the RUHS Archivist for Gladeo, alongside a Career Profile on being an archivist.
So whenever that’s coming together, assuming I’ll be on set as a producer of sorts, you know I’ll be sharing bits and pieces of it.
Stay tuned.
The content of most photos here are courtesy of the RUHS Archives.
There are few things which I will openly admit I have a massive bias toward.
Pokémon is something I unabashedly have a ginormous bias toward.
Pokémon Crystal was my first video game outside of some silly educational titles featuring Sesame Street or Elmo. I’ll always fall back on the story that it helped me learn how to read when I played with my Mom all those years ago because that memory is precious to me.
So whenever a brand new entry in the Pokémon series is announced, I truly feel young at heart.
Let’s just say I had to get up extra early for some meetings and intentionally overdid it to watch the Pokémon Direct live.
Though the announcement was seven minutes long, it offered a lot of hype.
Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield are new mainline games set in the Galar region. Kanto through Sinnoh were analogous to different parts of Japan, Unova was analogous to New York, Kalos was analogous to France and Alola was analogous to Hawaii.
Galar will take us into a world modeled after post-Industrial England:
I was a huge fan of the Let’s Go graphics because they were faithful to the original Red/Green/Blue/Yellow while updated for the Switch’s capabilities.
But just off of initial screenshots alone, Sword and Shield look like Pokémon games set in Breath of the Wild Hyrule.
That game’s minimalist style had an almost watercolor quality that screams out with the creative possibilities of a Pokémon region.
Just look at the battle screenshot. Its models may look similar to previous generation’s Pokémon, perhaps to save time, but having that countryside villa in the background is stunning.
The trainer models also look better than ever, featuring more realistic humans akin to the mobile app GO, but with far more personality than even Sun and Moon achieved.
Based on first impressions alone, all three of these starters are way too cute for their own good.
Unlike the Alolan starters where I immediately had a favorite (#TeamRowlet), I don’t know that I have one among these three.
The last time we saw a simian starter in Chimchar I wound up being a huge fan of Infernape. So the Grass-type Grookey has a shot.
Bunnies are also a favorite of mine in Pokémon, with Mega Lopunny being the first IV/EV trained ‘mon I ever bred in Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire. So the Fire-type Scorbunny has a shot.
But the Water-type Sobble is a wild card. It looks like Mudkip and uses a camouflaging gecko design reminiscent of Kecleon.
Any reference to Hoenn is appreciated, and that’s two in one!
I’ll honestly have to see their evolutions to decide who I want to stick by.
While these are the only Galar Pokémon we’ve seen thus far, I’m sure Game Freak will introduce us to the rest before the end of the year. Even if I do wish they would keep some more secrets this time.
In the meantime, we know the Galar region will represent a wide-range of Pokémon from other regions.
In this trailer alone we can see a Zweilous, Flygon, Wishiwashi, Hoothoot, Munchlax, Tyranitar and so much more.
Obviously I’m very excited to learn more, and there’s no doubt the next few months will be full of Sword and Shield information posts like I had for Sun and Moon!
These long periods of hype building up to the catharsis of a wonderful game have to be one of my favorite things about the Pokémon franchise nowadays. I live for the endorphines of new reveal trailers.
But what do you think about our first look at Sword and Shield, the Galar region and those new starters?
Let me know! I’m all kinds of ready for more and more Pokémon.
I kid of course. Out of all the blog posts I’ve ever written, a football-related piece is far from the one I’m looking to blow out of the park.
It just so happens that the only thing I’ve done today beyond researching history for my novel is watch the Superb Owl. So as much as I could care less about football, it might as well serve some kind of grander purpose.
Even though that grander purpose was definitely not to get me more invested in the sport.
Because hoo boy, I’m not a fan and even I could tell that Super Bowl 53 was lame.
The game was tied up 3 – 3 from field goals alone until the fourth quarter. There the Patriots scored the first touchdown of the game and a subsequent second field goal to end things 13 – 3.
As much as I couldn’t care less, at the very least I figured I should root for the Rams considering they’re a Los Angeles team. It’s just too bad they lost after an excruciatingly boring game.
The commercials weren’t even that special, making it so the one reprieve from sportball didn’t balance out the boring game.
But you know what. I’m at least a friendly acquaintance with Gene Park, who does social media stuff for the Washington Post, so I won’t complain about his business.
Let’s just say the concept was much better than the delivery.
Even I got in on the fun with my own hot take:
Who’s decision was it to actually go through with referencing the Spongebob “Band Geeks” episode during the #SuperBowl but only play the trumpet lead-in?
At the very least they could have put Adam Levine in a dome full of water.
If anything, I suppose this was my favorite part of the Superb Owl this year. Never before have I been ‘invested’ in the game enough to watch it carefully and follow the Twitter reactions as a result.
We’re going to talk about it this week in my Gaming class, so I figured I should pay attention.
Seeing the Internet lose its mind over the Spongebob debacle and a select number of commercials was more fun than I’ve had on social media in a long time.
However, that wasn’t the most fun thing about the game.
That honor, of course, had to go to the feast:
After a rough weekend, it was nice to take a little time to relax and pig out with lots of junk food.
Even if I’ll definitely have to hit the gym a few times this week to make up for it.
So anyway, that’s my sport-related content quota for the year. Anything else from here on out is pure overtime. Look forward to maybe that!
It’s kind of strange being on this side of the fourth wall when it comes to a high school award ceremony.
…
Which, I now realize sounds a bit dickish to lead off with, as if I’m trying to put more praise on myself for previous achievements?
But I swear that’s not at all the intent.
Because this is a blog post that’s all about my sister getting a sweet Academic Letter tonight!
Or, alternatively, if you prefer vague facial features:
Girl works her butt off with a heap of AP classes on top of doing Marching Band, Jazz Band… And probably like three other bands I’m forgetting off the top of my head.
Aly actually gets to rub this one in my face, because her time in Marching Band has allowed her to get an Athletic Letter as well as an Academic Letter. Even though I’m not entirely sure what the point of having two identical letter “Rs” that you’re supposed to put on a single letterman jacket is.
I think that’s the first time I’ve ever mentioned a letterman jacket before.
Do I get to be honorary sports person because of it?
Probably not. But hey, I can fake my way through it.
While I could spend the next 300 words talking about how much I’m proud of my sister, that’d probably get old fast. So I figured I’d talk a bit about the experience of being at the ceremony.
Like I mentioned up top, it was a bit strange being on the audience side of the equation for a big academic event like this. Because I’m always 5ish years ahead of Aly, she usually has to suffer through long ceremonies and stuff for me.
I have to apologize to her now, because god was it boring.
Yeah it was exciting to cheer when Aly went up. But for everyone else? I pretty much just lingered on my phone, texting some peeps and playing my vidya games.
There were a few key points in the event that did keep my interest.
For instance, while waiting outside of the Redondo Union High School auditorium, an old lady walked into the glass panel wall thinking it was an open door.
Which I would laugh way harder at if I hadn’t done the exact same when I was much younger, costing my grandmother a housing complex here in California as a result.
True story. I’ll have to tell it another time.
Another fun thing at the event was watching the PTSA President make a blatantly political statement at the top of this otherwise completely unrelated school function.
It was a harmless point about how “the U.S. will be in better hands in the future,” but boy if it wasn’t jarring and distracting in the moment.
During the actual ceremony itself, there were a few goofs of note. Most notable was one of the announcers mispronouncing “McGonigle.” Compared to the many other last names that he got through just fine which had clear Indian origins (as well as some other nationalities but Indian was the one that stood out), it was hilarious how bad he screwed it up.
There was also one kid who collected his award and danced on-stage before exiting. He was a baller.
Also, I found out that “McCurry” is a last name and that led to me thinking about a McDonald’s signature dish in India. Because apparently I just had India on the mind tonight?
I don’t know, man. Don’t ask me.
I suppose that’s really all I had to mention of note, however.
So I think I’ll leave you all on that note. Hope you guys have a great night!
Also, I hope you all return tomorrow for my Fire Emblem Heroes post. I thought the update was happening today, but turns out it’s happening tomorrow so my timing was really solid.
Also, also: There’s my talking about video games just to annoy Alyson in a post all about her moment of the day.
I was a little lukewarm about writing something for the ol’ blog today. Pretty much my whole arc of experiences has included doing homework and recovering from staying up so late to watch the 18 inning Dodgers/Red Sox game last night.
Because yeah, I watch sports once in a while. Luckily I just happened to be watching a sport when a record-breaking game did its thing.
But even if I like baseball more than pretty much any other sport, I don’t think I can write about that for extended periods of time.
Pretty much why I’m not a sports writer.
In terms of homework, I did an assignment about infographics for my Visual Communications class, read a few pieces on the McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education court case for my Evolution and Creation class, sent out some emails to professors (alongside some work emails for Gladeo) and spent some time trying to come up with a title for my Honors project.
None of that felt particularly enlightening to write about here, though.
So my only other real option was possibly writing about the fact that I’m going to be getting an award real soon as I found out via Twitter and the Daily Titan advisor Bonnie yesterday.
Yet even there it doesn’t feel like the right time to go around and say ‘hey go check out the thing that’s getting an award.’ I’ll probably do that around the time when I actually go to an awards ceremony.
Assuming that’s a thing that will happen sometime soon.
With all those dead ends in mind, I took a break, ate some food, went to the gym and showered. As always, going to the gym seemed to spark some inspiration on what to write.
Guess I’m as much of a proponent of the gym being a good chance to relax and clear your thoughts as anyone now? For as weird as that is to say.
But to be fair, it wasn’t actually the exercise itself that brought about some inspiration. Rather it was the homework that I continued to do while I was power walking on a treadmill.
Because you know. I’m lame like that.
One assignment I’ve been pushing off is picking an image to examine for my Visual Comm class’s final paper. The professor gave us a pre-determined list so I had to pick something off of it. While looking through the list of images at the gym, I stumbled across this gem that will definitely be what I write my paper on:
Just look at this 1950s 7-Up ad. It’s phenomenal. I’m not even sure where to begin talking about it.
Actually that’s not true, the obvious place to start is with the giant baby, an 11-month-old kid drinking a soda bottle as though it were milk. Not only is it a funny image, but it’s also a pretty striking one thanks to the color contrast.
Oh but that’s not all. I hope you read through the text on this sucker too, because if you did I’m sure you’ll see why I love it so much.
First off there’s an ad for a totally different T.V. show just slapped in next to the baby’s arm for some reason.
Then on the bottom-left corner, where the bottle is among a collection of other children’s toys, the advertisers recommend you “avoid imitations,” completely lacking the foresight to know that in the future everyone just calls everything of that nature Sprite anyway.
But most important is the larger block of text which advocates for, and I quote, “Add(ing) 7-Up to the (toddler’s) milk in equal parts” because it’s a “wholesome combination.”
That’s fucking astounding in just how genuine they are in advocating such a disgusting act for new mothers to immediately get their children hooked on shitty flavored carbonation water.
And I absolutely love it.
It’s just such a product of its time that I’m actually really looking forward to writing about the image for my essay. So much so that I thought it would be worth writing my blog post today about it so I can spread the gospel to you, my loving readers.
As an additional note, I did also want to point out that if I wasn’t picking the 7-Up ad, I would have gone with this ad for fancy ties:
I don’t think I really need to say why. Just the idea that getting a nice tie is justification for obscene misogyny (and making your wife love that same misogyny because it’s a ‘man’s world’) is such a great little time capsule.
Plus there probably would have been a lot to say about exactly what the implications are when you have your wife get down on her knees for something as innocuous as handing off breakfast in bed.
Because come on, look at his face. You know what he’s thinking.
But I digress, because soda baby spoke to me way more and I’m going with it.
P.S. — Just consider this post an open call for any other crazy old ads that could never have been made today with this kind of 50s aesthetic, because I think they’re amazing and would love to see more. Kay? Thanks.
I may not be a very sport-y person, but if there’s anything I enjoy about sports it would be the team naming conventions.
Yeah I know that’s a strange thing to latch onto. But trust me, there’s a through-line to this conversation. Which, spoiler alert, is video game related.
As a home-grown Southern California kid I do have some interests in sports teams that come from some semblance of nostalgia. Namely the Dodgers when it comes to baseball and the Lakers when it comes to basketball. I’ve gone to see them many times over the years, so there are fond memories there even if I’m not as much of an avid follower of their games as I am Nintendo games.
However neither are striking examples of the kind of naming conventions I enjoy when it comes to sports teams. Like… What even does the name ‘Dodgers’ stand for? If anything, you wouldn’t want to be good at dodging a ball when you play baseball. Don’t you get to walk when you’re hit by the ball while at bat?
Come on Dodgers, get your act together.
Granted there is something interesting about them specifically. The fact that both the Dodgers and the Giants were originally East Coast teams before coming to California.
Inherently that brings up some questions about the permanence of a name if it can be so easily uprooted and moved around. Like yeah now we always associate the Dodgers with Los Angeles, but they weren’t always so closely linked with the culture here. That’s kind of fascinating, honestly.
But hey that’s a long tangent isn’t it? What I was going to get at was the fact that I enjoy seeing sports teams that are named after singular entities which could potentially duke it out.
The phenomenon tends to be more prevalent in high school and college sports, in my head. At my high school the main rivalry was the Sea Hawks versus the Mustangs. Though I did have some school spirit, for the most part I couldn’t care less which campus actually won. It was just kind of cool to imagine some kind of battle between a vicious hawk (which my biology teacher told us was actually based on a real life bird known for crushing bones) and a majestic hoofbeast.
I imagine the same thing could be said for many small-town sports rivalries. Certainly the idea of two forces of nature going at it is much more exciting than some other team names. Like the Patriots. Or the Redskins.
Much less racist too.
As I already mentioned, I’m not just bringing up this idea because I have a sudden passion to talk about sports. Or racism scandals. There was actually a spark that got me thinking about the subject of sports team names.
Unofficial Pokémon battle tournaments.
Yeah you heard me right. Bet you didn’t think anyone would be relating competitive Pokémon battling to actual real life sports in your daily blog posts today. Well I am, so you best be ready for it.
There’s actually a healthy amount of comparisons one can make between the two. When preparing for a Pokémon battle, trainers are restricted to six members, much like sports teams are limited to X number of team members on the field. Those six Pokémon fit different roles, be them wholly offensive, defensive or supportive. Or they could be some combination of the three.
It’s not hard to say that my hyper-offensive glass cannon Mega Beedrill in a battle is comparable to a football team’s leading quarterback, or that my heal-passing Audino is supportive much like a shortstop on a baseball team that quickly gets the ball from base-to-base for multiple outs.
I don’t know, I think it’s a pretty easy comparison to make. Maybe you disagree, but it’s all just an unapologetic segue anyway.
The reason I’ve come to think about this subject is because of the lengths I’ve seen certain Pokémon-playing YouTube personalities go to when establishing battle leagues that are steeped in the traditions of real life sports.
There are about a billion examples out there, but the one that’s most impactful to me is the United Championship League (UCL). There’s no real specific reason why other than the fact that most of the circle that competes in it are a close-knit group of Pokétubers that I tend to watch fairly often.
Which yes is possibly one of the nerdiest things I’ve said around here. But does it look like I care?
The UCL started about three years ago and carried an interesting aesthetic:
Yeah that’s right. This is a Pokémon battle competition with an extended team draft and a classic branching tree tournament board. On top of that, each team tends to do a pre-game discussion where they determine which members they’re bringing based on the opponent’s overall draft and how they’re building their teams up as a result.
It’s kind of crazy to thing that that’s almost exactly the same thing as a real sports league, but I adore one and can’t bring myself to seriously care about the other.
I think part of the reason I do care so much about the UCL — other than the fact that I’m a Pokémon junkie in general — is the fact that another real life sports trope they use so well is the naming convention.
Every team in that league names themselves the same way. City name (or some other location) followed by a Pokémon name that matches in some way.
Though of course it would be a terrible mistake for me not to mention my absolute favorite Pokémon sports league name:
The New York Mankeys.
Shout out to ShadyPenguinn for coming up with literal perfection. That’s the kind of name I wish I was clever enough to come up with on my own. Not only is it a solid team name, it’s a great reference to an actual real sports team too.
I just love it man. I basically wrote this whole post just so I could say New York Mankeys out loud. It’s just the kind of name that makes me giggle whenever I hear it. More of the world deserves to hear about it even if it couldn’t give a damn about Pokémon.
Now before you ask. Yes. I have had moments where I’ve tried to figure out what my Pokémon sports team name would be. Though I haven’t exactly come up with a good answer as of yet.
Incorporating my favorite Pokémon Gardevoir would be tough without stretching my location to Gardenia (though Gardenia Gardevoirs is a cool name).
I do like the sound of something like the Manhattan Beach Mimikyu, though again that requires relegating my location to somewhere I’m technically not, a city that’s my city’s rival if nothing else.
Unfortunately I’m just not sure which ‘R’ Pokémon I would use to go with Redondo. Ralts sounds a little not intimidating, though they fit the Gardevoir line love. Roserade also doesn’t seem right, despite being one of my favorites.
Also let’s be honest. As much as the Redondo Rayquaza sounds dope, I’m not sure I’d want to use a Legendary. It seems a bit cocky.
The Redondo Rhydon might work well. I have a pretty strong affection for him too, and Rhydon certainly sounds like the kind of Pokémon that could fit a sports team.
I guess if you want you can leave your suggestions in the comments below. Or you can say what teams you might be able to make using your home region. That’d be cool to hear!
In the meantime, I’ve got a five-hour livestream recap to catch up on. So I’m going to go off and do that.
In the meantime, I suppose I should come up with some kind of moral for today’s post.
Uhh…
If you’re a sports guy, don’t make fun of nerds that like Pokémon. Because we do wacky competitive things too.
And if you’re a Pokémon guy, don’t make fun of nerds that like sports. Because they built up a cool structure that we can do stuff with.
Let’s just all live together in harmony. Liking weird things that we all like without judgement.
Welcome to the post talking about the other things I was referring to there.
Yeah I bet you weren’t expecting a conversation about Funko Pops, were you? They don’t exactly seem like the kind of thing in my area of interest.
I’ll admit that they aren’t for the most part. In fact, I don’t necessarily hate Funko Pops overall as my clickbait-y title might suggest.
If anything I’m willing to admit they’re rather cute for the most part. Plus I have been known to collect a somewhat useless series of plastic figurines in the past myself.
At least I only collect the Smash Bros. Amiibo…
So really there’s no reason I should hate this fairly harmless Hot Topic-stuffing collectible mogul, right?
Not really.
See I don’t necessarily hate Funko Pops as an inherit object that exists. What I absolutely abhor is the corporate design mentality surrounding Funko Pops.
As anyone who knows anything about Funko Pops must know, there are Funko Pops that exist for literally anything AND everything.
You like anime? Pick your favorite, there’s a series of Pops to go with them.
You like HBO television series like Westworld? God knows I do, and there’s a series of Pops to go with them.
You like the Marvel Cinematic Universe? You like video games? You like football? Actual real life football?
Because there are pops for all of those things and an infinite amount of other things I won’t bother to go into because look at this catalog. It’s nuts.
That’s 213 pages not even counting the ‘discontinued’ models
Especially the whole sports side of things. Side-rant I get being in love with sports and following, say, the Yankees or the Dodgers if you’re super into baseball. It’s just bizarre to have a series of collectible figurines representing actual real people that you can stick in your house.
But okay you get the point. If you’ve got an interest, Funko has a Pop to fit it.
Inherently I don’t have a problem with this business model. The fact that this company has invented a series of figurines so simple that literally any form of media can be molded into it is genius, and something the whole world probably wishes they figured out first.
As someone who has played many video games to 100 percent completion, and thrives on games like Monster Hunter where the whole idea is to collect exclusive bits and pieces of monsters to create new specialty armor, I can understand the itch many collectors have when it comes to Funko.
So yeah, if you want to go out and collect Funko Pops, more power to you. My family certainly does, and there are series I’d probably be more than willing to pay for a full collection of.
But that’s only considering the ‘first edition’ idea of these Pops. My problem comes with the alternate forms.
“Wow Jason, that’s ironic. You don’t like Funko Pops for producing alternate versions of characters when you talk endlessly about rare variants of characters in Fire Emblem Heroes like they’re the second coming. What a hypocrite.”
Lord knows I’m still after Tana…
Yeah I hear you audience, I know.
It’s no secret that I appreciate ‘special editions’ as much as the next guy. But Fire Emblem Heroes and Funko Pops are a little different at their core.
In FEH, the special variant units are just as free-to-start as every other unit in the game. Sure there are practices under the surface that encourage players to eventually spend money, like releasing five valuable banners in a row with few orb giveaways in between, but still.
You could just as easily start the game when a holiday banner is running and be just as likely to receive that unit with free orbs as anyone else.
With Funko Pops, every single one costs money. Just as much, if not more money in fact.
For example:
Do you like Deadpool? Okay, here’s a Deadpool figurine. That’ll be a nice little thing to display to show off your interest in the character.
Too expensive for you? I can understand that, perhaps you’d just like the OG Deadpool figurine, and maybe some smaller accessories to continue to show your Deadpool love.
“Alright, alright we get it,” I hear you in the audience say.
I sure hope you do. With the simplicity of the Funko Pop formula, any single character can be given infinite minor modifications and be considered a special variant.
But unlike the model in FEH, where you could theoretically earn the special version for free, every single Funko costs real life money.
Now there are arguments to be made that these are physical objects rather than digital characters in a video, and thus there’s more value to collecting them over time in terms of things like eventual trading or simply selling collections much like with comic books and vinyl records.
There’s validity to that idea. But that isn’t really what I’m here to discuss.
What I’m here to discuss is the fact that a business model allowing for infinite cash cow-ing on the same property over and over and over again, rather than keeping to a finite cap of collectability, is inherently infuriating.
I would be more than happy to spend 60 bucks over the course of a few months to collect five Deadpool figurines based on characters from the movies if I enjoyed them that much. What I wouldn’t be happy doing is spending literally all of my money for forever to keep up with every ‘left hand raised 60 degrees’ variation that can be squeezed out.
That’s not even just for Deadpool too, as much as I keep harping on him. He just happens to be a good example of a character that lends himself to more ridiculous, outlandish variations and repeated re-releases. Any character can have a variant where they wear a different outfit or hold a new pose.
Funko Pops certainly aren’t the first to abuse this model, but they abuse it pretty hard. It’s probably rather petty to be bashing them so hard for it out of nowhere, but I’ve seen similar ideas ruin things I’ve loved in the past.
Shuffle was a spin-off game released first on the Nintendo 3DS and then on mobile devices in 2015. It was something of a continuation of the Trozei and Battle Trozei series that became a free-to-start microtransaction-laden title. And I adored it.
Seriously, for the longest time if you had asked me what game handles the microtransaction system most fairly, it would have been Pokémon Shuffle. I played this damn game on my 3DS for years, and I have distinct memories of doing so both on my high school and college campuses.
The game ran on an ‘energy’ system, where you could play five games at a time before needing to wait for everything to recharge. Unless you spent gems, the in-game currency you could buy with real life currency.
It has been forever since I played this game, opening it up for this was wild.
There are also a bunch of other details related to items you can either grind out or purchase, but the energy was the important thing to me. See those five hearts of energy recharged at a rate of a half hour per heart.
In other words, you could play a full set of games every two-and-a-half hours. Compared to a lot of other games with energy or stamina caps, this was insanely generous.
For a student like me, it essentially meant I could play out my games, go to whatever class I had, then get out to find a full set of energy hearts waiting to be used. Combine this with the semi-regular updates (though eventually the levels got kind of ridiculously difficult) and frequent special in-game events, and I was more than happy to play for years.
My screenshot here hasn’t even captured half of the special variants for Pikachu alone. There are Pikachu wearing every cap that Ash ever wore in the anime. Pikachu wearing costumes modeled after Legendary Pokémon. Hell there’s a Rayquaza costume Pikachu AND a shiny Rayquaza costume Pikachu.
Again, Pikachu isn’t the only problem, but he’s emblematic of it. Everything technically started with the ‘winking’ starter Pokémon line.
This ridiculous cash cow, the infinite special variant system, is what burned me out of Pokémon Shuffle in the end. I was more than happy to keep playing to collect all 700+ Pokémon as a mark of personal completion should they have gotten that far.
But because the game’s creators wanted a way to keep the game going forever and come up with more challenging ways of potentially forcing players to spend money on limited time only extra special dudes, I didn’t feel like it was worth keeping up anymore.
Funko Pops embody the same problem, in my opinion. If you’re going to release the same figures over and over and over again with slight variations just to squeeze out as much money as possible, then why should anyone bother trying to collect them all in the first place?
I’m sure other people will have their justifications for it, but that’s a path I can’t see myself going down. I’d much rather stick with collecting something finite in my real world collectibles. Something I can eventually look at and say ‘this is a complete set.’
That’s my rant for the day. What do you think? Is the idea of infinite variation healthy for a brand like Funko? Or is it detrimental in their long-term viability as a reasonable company, as I’m more inclined to believe.
…
Though obviously I’m probably in the wrong since, let’s be real, people will continue to buy those things no matter what I say. So the more they can print up the more money they’ll make.
So fair warning, this story feels like it’s probably the most self-serving thing I’ve ever written and I don’t have too much to say about it.
As I’m sure anyone who follows my exploits on this blog knows, I spent a good amount of time this weekend at awards banquets (the Comm Awards and SPJ for those who missed out). That time I spent was actually just the tip of the iceberg as far as what the Daily Titan has seen this year in terms of awards, however.
Despite the fact that I would argue the whole exercise of having someone write an article about awards who has been involved in said awards seems a bit conflict-of-interest laden, we were inspired by papers like the New York Times who always point out stories they’ve won awards for and decided to do it ourselves.
Naturally I was thrown the piece on deadline since I was the news assistant on shift.
Overall it wasn’t a difficult story to write. The really difficult part was compiling the list of every award we’ve won over the last year or so. Forty is the magic number, for anyone curious.
I say that genuinely too. It’s probably one of the three sports stories I’ve read in the last… Seven years of doing journalism.
Anyway though, that’s enough plugging someone else. I’m here to plug me.
If you want to see me fellate our newspaper and talk about things I’ve won and things my colleagues have won, you can check it out here. It’s actually pretty worth it to see the list of everything, which my editor Amy and I used as an opportunity to link out to all of the stories involved.
You can also see my full archive of work for the Daily Titan over on the right!
Jason's Blog - Work in Progress 