People with taste celebrated on Friday, when Funko stock plummeted almost 60 percent.
But like the antagonist in the last minutes of an 80s slasher flick, Funko has bounced back.
Left for dead by a great many investors late last week, Funko (FNKO 0.59%) stock experienced quite the revival on Monday. Shares of the POP! collectibles purveyor leaped nearly 30% higher on the day as bargain seekers piled into the company anew.
It’s been said that “Get woke, go broke” is pure fantasy.
Now, the economy has descended to such levels of phoniness that “Go broke” is fiction.
Funko had an awful Friday, with its shares plummeting a scary 59% after the company reported its third-quarter earnings. The highly specialized consumer goods company missed badly on its bottom line, an unforgivable sin for many investors.
In an even worse transgression, Funko made downward adjustments in guidance for both the entirety of 2022 and its current (fourth) quarter; uncomfortably, this is the quarter in which the winter holidays fall.
But did the company really deserve such severe punishment from Mr. Market? Sure, that net profit came in well below expectations, and few investors feel joy when a company lowers guidance. However, Funko did manage to increase its revenue by 37% (to almost $366 million), which is a feat for any company in any economic sector.
One thing is clear: We’re not voting our way out of Clown World – with our ballots or our wallets.
But just as that’s no reason to participate in government humiliation rituals, it’s no excuse to spend your life savings on plastic Pop Cult idols.
It’s not about punishing the clowns. It’s about preserving your soul from cooperation with evil.
Learn how to liberate yourself from the Pop Cult, and have fun while you’re at it.
Nothing that survived 1998 has ever gone out of business. That’s how fake it all is.
You just hit on an aspect of the Ground Zero phenomenon I’d overlooked. Seen in that light, 1997 was cultural coup to rival the political one of 2020.
Brian and JD,
So we’re in the samidzat/ medieval monks phase? We’re recuperating our past but we still have to shill and distribute our creations semi underground?
xavier
Xavier,
I’ll let them answer the creation and distribution question. That’s not my forte. Your comment about monasteries struck a cord, though, because I’m studying church history in seminary right now. We have spent a fair amount of time on the development of the monastic traditions, from the Desert Fathers all the way up to the Franciscans and Dominicans. The first course stops around 1350 so we have not talked about the Carmelites, except for some passing references to St John of the Cross and St Teresa of Avila. In any case, the monastics have had such an enormous impact on Christendom that going back to them doesn’t really seem like a bad thing. We might all benefit from discerning a Rule of Life appropriate to our vocation – Franciscan, Benedictine, Dominican, Augustinian, and forth – and then striving in God’s grace to live it out.
Speaking of Ground Zero, BPS/Felix Rex had a video recently touching on it, but focused more on innovation, ingenuity and discovery rather than culture:
https://youtu.be/zum672SQX8Q
His take, being not of Faith, is that we hit a evolutionary dead end. My take, the Western Mind divorced itself from God since the time of Huss and Luther, and as such, rejects Truth and Wisdom, hence the stall.
You’ve discussed the cultural reasons for the Ground Zero stall…but is there a spiritual significance to that year to your knowledge?
The Protestant Revolt marked the point of rupture with all past Tradition that led straight to Clown World.
Never bought a Funko, but only a matter of circumstance than virtue to resist the pop-cult. I recall buying the action figures for Blizzard’s Starcraft. That would have been ’98, making me 32-years old at the time. Wince and cringe. I suppose I could at least say that this was when Blizzard was actually good, but more importantly for the Ground Zero model, this was when the game-store where I worked started getting inundated with pop-cult accessories like action figures and assorted non-video game bric-a-brac.
This strikes a chord with me. Half of Gamestop’s shelves are now things like t-shirts, action figures, and other game branded, non-game things. These used to be used games from prior generation consoles and *gasp* PC games on physical media.