An extravaganza of pop culture collector items was up for grabs at The Central Texas Collectors Market at the Killeen Arts and Activities Center on Saturday.
About 20 vendors filled the activity center’s main auditorium with action figures, collectible cards, art prints, and even nostalgic video game cartridges.
However, the room was dominated by collectible bobbleheads with licenses from popular movies, television, comics, and sports franchises called Funko Pops.
Funko has licensed out just about every pop culture character imaginable. As vendor Michael Aker put it “Funko isn’t selling bobbleheads, they are selling memories.”
“When people see a pop and see a familiar character, they remember, ‘Oh, I watched that movie with my dad,’” Aker said. “It’s the stuff you’ve done with other family members. It’s not necessarily the Pop, it’s the Pops representing your memory.”
Nostalgia is a big business, and these collectible bobbleheads aren’t just for kids. Aker estimates about 50% of Pop sales are adults.
The value of Funko Pops can vary wildly. A common Pop found on any store shelf will be worth very little, but the value of collector variants can skyrocket for “chase variants,” “retail exclusives” and especially “convention exclusives.”
Nicole Rondon of “Happy Poppin Family” on 105 W. Veterans Memorial Blvd. makes a living selling Pops and collectibles and came to the event to support the community.
Rondon got her start selling Pops in a kiosk at the PX on Fort Cavazos.
“Pops and collectibles exploded during the pandemic and we started selling them on post shortly after things began opening up again,” Rodon said.
She brings “Happy Poppin Family” to comic cons, including the recent Bell Country Comic Con at the Cadence Bank Center in Belton.
Funko has been making Pops since 2011, but hit its stride a few years before the pandemic, Rondon said.
“About 2016 they started dropping a lot of Marvel and it started the Pop craze,” she said.
Since then, some have worried that the Funko bubble would burst, but it has held strong.
“It’s stuck around,” she said. “You have your good waves and bad waves, depending on what is hitting the market. You can see that it’s holding strong right now.”
