I've actually never purchased a Pop! vinyl toy from Funko before. There are what I feel to be thousands out there, but this is my first one. I know that everything from "Adventure Time" to "Orange is the New Black" has been made in this series but that right there is my problem. Some time ago- years maybe- we saw Finn and Jake at a store in a mall and I wanted to buy them. The trouble is, if I had bought them back then and we had gone on to buy every other Pop! vinyl toy we wanted we would have simply run out of room. They are like the Imaginext toys only for adults because there are just so many different licenses that they hold. For kids though, they don't work as well because the articulation is limited as most don't have moving arms and legs.
When I think of the Pop! vinyl series I always think of big heads and little bodies. However, this is not the case with Skipper or any of these Penguins of Madagascar toys. We found Skipper randomly at a Target one day and have not seen any other Penguins at any other Target since, though I'm sure if we went to the proper stores we might be able to find more Penguins. The thing is, Skipper is my favorite of the lot- at least for Pop! vinyl toys- because he is eating the Cheezy Dibbles. This really made this toy a must for me because of the detail put into it in terms of the cheese being all over him.
Oddly enough when I went to the official Funko website and found Skipper on it (Which is the link at the top of this post) the Skipper they show there is clean and does not have the orange cheese all over his face and flippers. Is this a variant? Was only the dirty version made and the clean was simply the prototype? I'm not sure and I'm not really going to look into it. If a clean version does exist it doesn't matter to me because it's not like I'm going to go out and buy that one as well-- I prefer the dirty one. (Although the package does have some sort of convention exclusive sticker on it, which makes me wonder how it ended up at Target but perhaps is the case for the variant)
As someone who watches movies targeted at children (Because I have a child and because I like cartoons) I have to admit that the largest difference between Disney and everybody else has got to be their marketing especially in terms of toys. If a Disney movie is coming out you can tell because of the toys you'll see on shelves. But even Dreamworks doesn't have the best toys always because a lot of the time I feel as if they're non-existent. Were there official toys for the Penguins of Madagascar movie? The only ones I remember were from McDonald's.
So to have this as a symbol of that movie- which I do enjoy so much and so does Quentin- is nice if only for the effect of "Oh, look! Something related to the Penguins!". After picking up this Pop! vinyl toy we did watch Penguins of Madagascar again (It's on Netflix) and I believe that was our second or third time seeing it. So it is strange to think that this is my first Pop! vinyl toy from Funko and I'm not going to say that it will be my last but one of the biggest reasons why I was drawn to it was because it isn't the typical big head/little body shape I've come to know these for being. I'm not entirely sure what other characters Funko can make in this series that also stray from that pattern but if they surprise me and impress me then I will most likely be adding to the collection which stands right now at only one.
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