Among the many (many, many) things I collect are Funko Pop Vinyl figures. I don’t strive for complete sets because that is boring, and instead I just get the ones I like (or the ones that have to go together, because you can’t really have Finn without Jake and Sharknado without everything else ever). This makes for an eclectic collection, but I’m okay with that – it is very much like me (colourful, useless, and not all there).

Funko has been around for years, but they’ve only recently become mega popular. This is great, because they’re releasing figures for all kinds of pop culture titles both new and old – but as my collection grows, I’ve realized something that has me kind of grumpy about the whole damn thing:

The female figures are made in such a way that they are too skinny to stand up on their own.

This style of figure is called “super deformed“. They hold a loose resemblance to the character they’re supposed to be, and in no way proportional to an actual human being – so WHY OH WHY do the female figures have to be so fucking dainty that they require an additional plastic base to stand upright?!

Take a look:

top row: gogo yubari, myrtle snow, willow rosenburg
middle row: gentleman, creature from the black lagoon, seth green as oz
bottom: marceline, fionna, hello kitty, maleficent

The Willow figure doesn’t have a base because I accidentally threw it out. I’ve had it for a couple of weeks now, and was always frustrated that I couldn’t get her to stand up properly. Today when I opened several new figures, I realized the girls came with bases to keep them up – and sure enough, there was a hole in Willow’s foot for the stand I didn’t see in the package.

The middle row are male characters. Most of them share the same body, unless the body has a unique feature or piece of clothing that changes the mold. Oz’s body could be replaced with that of Agent Coulson, Deadpool, Admiral Ackbar, Superman, Greedo, or any of the hundreds of other characters available in the Funko lineup .. and ALL of them stand up as is, with no base needed.

The bottom row features older Funko female figures. This trend of “girls should be ultra skinny, even when the entire proportion is off” appears to be new, because each of those characters are able to stand up without a stupid base. The Pop Vinyl line has a lot of non-human characters, too – they’ve found a way to make the fish from Finding Nemo stand up, but grown woman figures? Nope, they need help standing.

Funko, I love your stuff. A lot. Last month I placed an order for 12 different figures to expand my collection with adorable nerdy things. I have a massive collection of pop culture figures, and your items are proudly displayed on my shelves for me to look at and enjoy. I’d really love to continue giving you money, so can you revisit the design for your human female character figures and maybe make them a little less ridiculously dainty? In case you missed it, it’s really fucking difficult to be a female fan of anything these days. Video games, comic books, and anything even remotely nerdy are very hostile at the moment, so the last thing we need right now is to see yet another company not realizing what kind of message they send when they do things like this. I don’t get the sense at ALL that you think your figures are for boys or men only – I love that you’ve got Disney movie characters right alongside the Walking Dead and Starcraft and Goonies and Adventure Time – so please, let women stand on their own two feet.