This week the Pop Culture League poses a particular favorite type of challenge: the very vague. I like these because you can run all over with them.
Buying Blind
Who doesn’t love gambling on a blind box or mystery package?
I've been on the blind bag wagon for years now. Before Funko, before LEGO, there were all sorts of Japanese import toys and Kubrick Universal Monsters that I'd get at Newbury Comics. For those of you outside New England, Newbury Comics is a small chain store specializing in pop culture everything.
Sometimes, the fun of it really is not knowing what you're going to get. It's just like when you were a kid and you plopped two quarters into a capsule vending machine that promised all sorts of goodies. You could get candy, maybe a cheap-o ring, for a quarter, but for two or three? You convinced yourself you might get something really cool.
Even though it was something like two years ago, I remember seeing the breakdown Funko's first series of SciFi Mystery Minis. It went a little something like this...
That's some pretty iconic characters right there, but they seemed to make a lot of the ones I'd want hard to get! Sure I was excited as all get out to see Tron in there, but then I saw the Rocketeer and got even more excited...until I saw that there was a 1 in 72 chance of getting him. I get that the reasoning might be he's not as popular so in order to get him made at all, they make less but...c'mon!
So one day at Newbury Comics, I picked up a couple of boxes for the heck of it. Hey, at least I had a decent shot at getting Tron, right? I mean there are two versions so that's like double the odds or something. Who said I'd never use math after high school?
One of them was Robocop
Not bad, not bad. Robocop's cool. He's not Tron or the Metaluna Mutant but considering how many of the series I couldn't care less about, I was happy.
Then I opened the second one...
Holy Sweet Mother of Dragons!
Sometimes you break even and get something you're satisfied with. Sometimes you get something you don't like...but maybe you can trade it. And sometimes you just get flat out "I should go buy a lottery ticket" lucky as anything and you nail it.
Check out what other League members are posting about here.
And here's a few to whet your appetite...
Brother Midnight has got quite a collection!
Garbage Pail Kids pop in at 20 Years Before 2000
AF Blog has plenty of cool little monsters
I like blinds. From that set, I got ET and Robocop. I've got a bunch of others like some WWE stars, Shaun (of the Dead), and a classic Cylon. Good stuff.
ReplyDeleteI traded with someone (Erick? I think) and got the Cylon and Robbie the Robot too.
DeleteLUCKY!!! I have bought a few series 2 boxes to see if I can get a Voltron, but have had no success :(
ReplyDeleteThat is one series that maybe I should have picked up. My collection needs one of those Alien figures.
ReplyDeleteThere's some other company that does Titan figures that are similar to these and they did a whole Alien set.
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