Ten months in Georgia, away from
our charming state and specifically
Snohomish County was extremely taxing on my
moral.
Yes, life in Georgia doesn’t
match the raw, unrestrained natural beauty, or family friendly allure that our
state offers.
We are in fact blessed to
be living in a location that offers so much economic, social, and natural
wealth beyond anything the east can imagine.
I love this place.
One of a few important events that
I missed while deployed was the mid-2017
grand opening of the new Funko
Headquarters in Everett, WA.
Now if you
don’t know what Funko is, that’s fine, because you’ve been living out of the
cool-loop and not everyone can be cool.
Funko primarily produces stationary and bobble-head vinyl
popular-culture character figures, known as
POP!.
These figures range from Darth Vader,
Huckleberry Hound, and Batman (the POP! universe is much larger than the few
named characters}.
They also produce
popular-culture t-shirts, lanyards, cups, and flare to match your
personality.
The figures can be found on
the
Funko’s site, Amazon, Walgreens, Target, comic book conventions, and
wherever pop-culture items are sold.
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| Funko Headquarters with POP! icons lining the exterior. |
I’m still fairly new to the
POP! community.
I learned about Funko when I was deployed to
Afghanistan in 2015-2016.
My boss at the
time had a cool habit of buying
POP!
figures for his employees in an attempt to match their personality as he saw
them.
He bought me the Black Knight from
The Monty Python and The Holy Grail,
because he said, “you don’t quit” and possibly because of my stubborn ways.
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| Black Knight POP! from The Monty Python |
I appreciated the gesture no matter the
intention.
When he got me this character
my curiosity led me to he back of the package, because I thought it to be
interesting what region of our country would create such a cool and reasonably
priced item, that’s where I saw Everett, WA and at that moment my love affair
with Funko started.
I just love all
things local and am proud of local business that make it big.
At that point I made it a goal of mine to
visit their headquarters when I had the opportunity.
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| Entrance to Funko Headquarters |
The
City of Everett became an instant
winner with Funko Headquarters opening there.
The shop immediately enhances the tourism appeal of the city, which
surrounding shops and dinning can benefit from.
The headquarters itself offers 17,00 square
feet of awe, sectioned, and themed from the Harry Potter to Batman to Star
Wars.
One area of the store that I
thought was a great addition and idea, was the section dedicated to customers
building their own POP.
In this section
people can choose from a Funko Freddy or monster head, mixing and matching an assortment
of body parts, headgear, and accessories along the way.
It’s really a great way to get creative and
enjoy the Funko experience.
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| Anime and geek section. |
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| Funko's original character section |
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| The DC Funko experience. |
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| Star Wars is always fun |
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| Darth Vader calling out orders |
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| The POP! Factory. Build your own POP. |
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| Funko Freddy on the assembly line |
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| Build your own POP |
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| There are so many options at the POP! Factory |
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| Funko Freddy head |
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| Monster head |
There are so many POPs and the
Funko universe is impressively larger than the store, I think there is room for
expansion. It looks like people stay inside
the store for about an hour and Funko needs to find a way to keep people inside
longer, but how do they accomplish this?
I think this brand has an opportunity for building more, like a
rollercoaster or two inside the store.
There is also potential for serving food, snacks, or drinks on the
property. They could just buy surrounding
buildings and design a way to connect their main building to other buildings,
each building having its own awesome theme.
The potential is limitless and I’m sure the brains at Funko have already
thought of this.
