When I started Poppin Off Toys, mostly by accident, 8 years ago, I had no clue what I was doing. I was just a collector who loved these little things and wanted to get some money to buy the more expensive ones. I remember calling Funko every day for weeks until they answered and connected me with the person who handled new accounts. I tried my best to sound like an actual store and not just some guy in his mancave wanting to open a wholesale account. Somehow, it worked and I started ordering Pops directly from Funko.

Because I was brand new to ALL of this, I didn’t have a lot of money to purchase the products that I needed, so I decided to take pre-orders on the Pops that Funko would announce are coming. And it worked. People would pre-order the Pop and I would ship it to them when it arrived from Funko.

This model worked amazing for years. I got big enough to quit my full-time job and make Poppin Off Toys my full-time job. In 2021, I moved from the operation from my home to a brick-and-mortar store in Nashville, TN. I was living an absolute dream. I’ve always wanted to own a business that brings joy to my customers. This was it.

Then 2022 happened. Funko started experiencing massive delays with their products, but still were announcing items and we were still selling them. Our bankroll was the most money I have ever had in the bank. But I knew it wasn’t mine.

Our expenses started increasing as bubble wrap and tape doubled in price and freight and shipping went up as well. And Funko stopped letting companies cut their orders. Essentially, we would order more than we needed to anticipate growth and we would cut that number down to what we needed before it would ship. Without that ability, we were suddenly paying for hundreds of Pops that we didn’t need. Totally on us.

Our large bankroll started shrinking fast. We owed Funko more money than we had if everything we had on the list shipped to us. I was in full panic mode. My mental health deuterated fast. I owed so many Pops to people and had no way to pay for them.

This is the reason we have seen SO many smaller Funko stores go out of business this past couple of years. I realize now that we were all essentially borrowing your money to pay for items that we had already sold months ago. It was bound to come crashing down at some point and it did.

I refused to screw over customers. I couldn’t. This wasn’t just a transactional business to me, it’s a relational one as well and all of you deserved better than for me to just close up and disappear.

So, I took out loans to pay for the product we still needed to fulfill orders and we pivoted to focusing on selling mid-range and grail Pops. And just recently we announced that we will start carrying trading card games like Pokémon, Magic and Disney Lorcana.

We are still in a big hole, but it’s not because we can’t fulfill your order. And that was the most important thing to me. To help us get out of this hole, I’ve begun to also sell my collection. And that’s where this “Luck of the Drop” Mystery Box comes in.

I own the “Big 4” of Pixar Pops. Blue Suit Mr. Incredible, Chase Glow Mike Wazowski, Flocked Sulley and Flocked Lotso. Three of those four are in this mystery box.

Because they are valued around $1,800 each, it was going to be hard to sell them on their own. What if there was a way for someone to get them for cheap? But also, help us continue to dig out of the hole?

On Monday, March 18th at 11:00AM we will go live with the “Luck of the Drop” Mystery Box. The price for each box is $9.99. The odds are 1 in 333 of getting one of the top 3 Pops. We are separating the grails into 3 groups of 333 Pops, and once 333 boxes sell, we will ship that group out.

Yes, the other Pops in the sale are common Pops and yes it will help us out tremendously to be able to move that many common Pops at once. But on the flip side, 3 people will get around a $1,800 Pop for $9.99 and the rest will get a common Pops for less than retail price.

So, there ya go. The truth on what’s happened to so many in this industry. I have learned some hard lessons these past couple of years, but I’m so thankful to still be here. And that’s because of you. And some loans. But we will get there.

And it starts with our “Luck of the Drop” mystery sale that goes live on PoppinOffToys.com on Monday, March 18th at 11:00AM. Good luck and as always, keep it Poppin.