Image: press square
In a not-so-environmentally friendly move, Funko Pop is throwing an estimated $30 million to $36 million worth of unsold stock into a landfill. The company claims that storing the excess inventory is costing it a fortune, so it’s willing to write off the figurines and stick them in the ground, where they’ll stay until the end of time.
“Inventory totaled $246.4 million at year-end, a 48% increase year-over-year,” revealed a press release spotted by Kotaku. “This includes inventory that the Company plans to eliminate in the first half of 2023 to reduce fulfillment costs by managing inventory levels to align with the operational capacity of our distribution center. This is expected to result in a write-down of approximately $30-$36 million in the first half of 2023.”
In other words, Funko Pop’s warehouses are crammed to the gills with 5″ tall plastic figurines of vaguely recognizable cultural icons — and it’s got to be something. The toy experienced a bit of a boom during the pandemic, but sales have slowed since then, prompting the company to trim its forecasts and cut its workforce. Unsurprisingly, stock prices are way down.
We have nothing against collectibles per se, but we’d say it’s a powerful indictment of humanity’s hubris that we’ll eventually ruin our planet by cramming thousands of unsold chibi machine gun Kellys into the ground.