168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Funko Fundays is something you have to see to believe. The annual in-person event, typically held during San Diego Comic-Con, is the ultimate Funko fan experience, and perhaps more importantly, a chance to get hold of some extremely rare and outrageously expensive Funko Pops. Part fan fest and part game show, Funko Fundays is a feeding frenzy🔜 of freebies that, for better or worse, represents the very peak of consumer culture.

This year, Funko reimagined the four-hour Fundays event into a weekend-long event held at the company's second retail store in Hollywood. For $150, fans could take part in a 30-minute walkthrough experience filled with games and prizes, followed by all-day access to the✅ Funko Trading Post where even more prizes were handed out. While not quite as fruitful or exciting as traditional Fundays, Funko delivered a promising structure that has the potential to bring the Funday experience to more fans, provided it can s🌠mooth out a few rough spots.

Grab Your Fedora And Convention-Approved Bull Whip

This year’s funday theme wꦚas “quest for the grail”, and as I approached the Funko store for my 10am reservation, I could see a line of people in Indiana Jones cosplay extending several blocks awayꦍ from the building. Though everyone attending has their own reserved time slot, there’s a superstition among collectors that the earlier you arrive at Fundays, the better your prizes will be. It seems that tradition may have carried over to the store version, too.

After checking in, I was assigned to Team Piranha and sent into the lobby to wait for the event to begin. Attendees are divided into four themed teams at the regular Fundays, but for the store version, there were three: Llamas, Iguanas, and Piranhas. Spoiler alert: these similar-sounding team names caused a lot of confusion.

If you’ve never been to Funko Hollywood, it’s pretty spectacular. The 40,000 square foot store twists and turns with lots of areas to explore and giant Funko Pop installations around every corner. After being greeted by the world’s biggest Baby Groot Funko Pop at the entrance, y🔴ou enter to find a pop-filled Dไisney Toontown, The Justice League’s Hall of Justice, and, oh yeah, the Kool-Aid Man.

For the event, much of the store was decorated to suit the jungle adventure theme, including a Pop-themed temple arch at the front entrance. Here is where we were introduced to our adventure guides, a trio of high-energy fun-facilitators wearing microphones and carrying rubber torches, who led us intoꦚ the temple to begin our quest🐼 for the grail.

There Are No Indoor Voices At Funko Fundays

As we filtered into the first area, our guides took the stage beneath a giant Sorcerer Mickey Pop to get the fun started. There was a little banter about the dangers that awaited us 🌠in the temple, followed by a call and response pledge to not spoil the secrets of Fundays for future adventurers. Soon, our first round of prizes came out, and everyone was handed a random bag with either a Pop or a Soda figure. I got a Funime Series Franny Funko (1/2500) and my partner got a Franny Funko as the Pink Ranger Pop (1/1050). Our hosts conti♏nued, but everyone was too busy comparing the rarity of their prizes to pay attention. Some Soda receivers around me were visibly frustrated at missing out on an actual Pop. This was the first sign of trouble.

Then it was t✨ime for our first game, ༒which everyone who has attended Fundays before knows well: which team can scream the loudest. At Fundays, the hosts announce that there are secret microphones under the tables measuring how loud everyone is, which is obviously not true, but it’s nice that they’re at least pretending the game is fair. Here, our hosts abandoned all pretenses and, after several minutes of screaming, announced Team Iguana had won, earning them an additional Pop figure prize.

From there the three teams split up and moved to different sections of the store. For the next game, my team was further divided into three groups and pres🦩ented three towers of blocks. Each side of the blocks had a different part of a Funko Pop or some letters, and we were told whoever could find a clue to the location of the grail would win. The most eager players on my team got to work stacking the blocks in an attempt to make a complete Funko, for some reason, while the winning team used the letters to spell out a word. They got a Pop, the rest of us got a button.

We were then escorted to the next section 🔴- a shelf full of sports and music Pops covered with a brown net to make it look more temple-like, and told to take as many pictures as we could in the next five minutes. People were taking pictures of every little thing, expecting to find a hidden symbol or the answers for a quiz, but it turned out that was a distraction tactic to keep us all busy until the other two teams were finisꦬhed with their games, which felt a little patronizing.

Once the three teams regroup🍌ed with our three clues, our guide opened the door to the next section. Out from the other side of the door burst a group of dancing mummies! After a minute of dancing our guides sprayed them with an aerosol “mummy spray” which caused them to retreat and we all entered the final section of the store together.

Inside, we found Freddy Funko himself and received our second group prize. This time I got my own Franny Funko as Pink Ranger, while my partner got yet another Pink Ranger of her own. This took longer than expected because someone got upset that there was a dent on their box and started arguing with the Funko employee who handed it to them, who was unwilling to swap it out for another prize. I didn’t see it happen, but someone suggested the guy didn’t like the Pop he was given and so dented it himself ✤and tried to exchange it.

After a brief raffle where several people won prototype Funkos, it was time f🧸or the final game. Each team picked two players, who were then given a basket full of fake fruit. All six players then competed to place each piece of fruit on a dot on the floor that matched the color of the fruit. It seemed as though all three teams declared victory simultaneously, but Team Piranha was declared the official winner.

Thanks to the poor quality of the microphones it wasn’t clear if the host said Piranha or Iguana, so bot🍎h teams rushed to the prize area to collect. The employees refused to hand prizes to Iguanas, but some Iguanas weren’t taking no for an answer. They shouted, they argued, and they rallied the team, get🦄ting them all to chant Iguana over and over in an attempt to demand prizing. They even blocked me and other Piranhas from getting to the prizes, telling us no, Iguanas won this one.

It was a pretty lousy end to a rather short experience, because after that we were ushered out of the building and unceremoniously handed the “grail” - our Pop-filled Box of Fun - as we walked ou🌞t the ♊door. I’ve seen similar bad behavior at the regular Fundays events, though. Free Pops seem to bring out the worst in some people.

The Fun Continues In The Hot, Hot Sun

Now it was time to head across the street into the Funko Trading Post to open our boxes of fun. Each box contained three Pops and a Soda, with the grail being a 1/100 Fred🍸dy Funko as Iron Man. My box wasn’t spectacular. The lowest count Pop I got was a 1/500 Freddy Funko as Green Lantern, and nobody likes Green Lantern. I also got Freddy as Michael Myers (1/3000) and Freddy as Zuko (1/3500). Funko invited me to the event so I didn’t pay for my ticket, but if I had, I likely would have broken even or come out slightly ahead.

The Trading Post was a parking lot fille💃d with tables, yard games, food trucks, a merch booth, and a beer garden, where attendees could hang out for the rest of the day after their adventure. Every half hour, the MC would take the stage to introduce a creative at Funko or a celebrity guest and give away more Pops and prototypes.

Samantha Beart was there signing Karlach Pops, and Matthew Lillard took the stage to tell stories and give out Sಞcream and Scooby-Doo Pops. Whenever anyone walked on stage, attendees swarmed like fish at feeding time. There were a few occasions where someone made the mistake of launching a Pop into the crowd instead of handing it to someone, which inevitably led to the kind of grabby fights you see with foul balls at baseball games.

It was sweltering in the Hollywood parking lot under the late-June sun, but the chance to win such rare prizes kept the energy positive. I saw tons of people win high-value protos like Vegeta, Stitch, and She-Ra, just for knowing the words to the TMNT theme song or guessing Matthew Lillard’s favorite movie (Star Wars). I also brought 💧some of my own Pops to trade, made a cool $600, and met some really cool people throughout the day.

When there’s a chance for a lot of people to win high-doll🗹ar prizes, greed is inevitable, and not everyone is going to be on their best behavior. But what I’ve always appreciated about Fundays is that they allow the real fans to share their interests and nerd out about their collections. While I didn’t love baking in the heat all day (and I have the sunburns to prove it), I like that this format could create more of a fan fest environment for Fundays, and I’d like to see it return bigger and better in the future - hopefully with better microphones and better names for the teams.