Author: Eric Fritzius
March 2, 2018
(An ongoing writing project in which I catalog and quantify my extensive TARDIS collection.)
This is Funko POP! Vinyl’s version of a TARDIS keychain. It’s meant to be a miniature version of their TARDIS POP! Vinyl Toy, albeit one without working doors. (Or, rather, door, but that’s a complaint for the future.) For those unfamiliar with the plague that is Funko POP! Vinyl, the toys are primarily figurines of pop culture characters with disproportionately large heads and black circles for eyes. The figures are usually about four inches in height, but Funko made a series of keychain models that shrunk them down to around an inch and the TARDIS is just a smidge over that (unlike the larger toy version, which is nearly half again as tall as the figures).
I call POP! Vinyl figures a plague because, while I own around ten of them myself (of the Doctor Who, MST3k, and Portal 2 varieties) I don’t give the ass of a flying monkey about 90 percent of their output and kind of resent the fact that there are now layers of them under foot in all nerd/videogame/movie/music stores, where they glut entire walls. I weep for our landfills.
Like all the other TARDIS keychains, I ditched its chain as soon as I was able to. It’s super-blocky size would make it inconveniently large to use as a keychain, though I must note that Funko’s choice of a rubbery plastic for the production would lend itself to durability. (At least for the TARDIS, as most people I know who have bought and used any of the figure-model keychains quickly find they have nothing left but decapitated character heads dangling from their keys after the bodies snap off.)
Much like its larger counterpart, there’s not a lot of detail on this thing. But that’s the POP! Vinyl aesthetic to start with, so o
ne cannot complain about the lack of woodgrain or the fact that it’s super chunky. (It’s so chunky, in fact, that I’m not sure it would actually fit very far into a standard shot glass.) I t’s fine. I’ll give it a full four TARDi and save the tale of the larger model for another time.
ne cannot complain about the lack of woodgrain or the fact that it’s super chunky. (It’s so chunky, in fact, that I’m not sure it would actually fit very far into a standard shot glass.) I t’s fine. I’ll give it a full four TARDi and save the tale of the larger model for another time.