Nearly 20 years ago, Brian Mariotti, a pop culture aficionado with a background in nightclubs, bought a tiny bobblehead company from his buddy, Mike Becker. Within a few years, that company and its new form factor, Pop! Vinyl became a household name: Funko.
Following a sale to private equity, a historic IPO (it didn’t go quite as planned), a series of acquisitions into adjacent businesses, and millions upon millions of Pop! Vinyl figures later, Funko became a billion-dollar company. But, as the misquoted Shakespearian saying goes, “Heavy is the head that wears the crown,” and success brought challenges and change.
Last year, Mariotti faced the oft-touted “retirement” that doesn’t last long for those of a certain ilk, particularly in the toy business. This fall, he emerged at New York Comic Con (NYCC) with a new company rooted in a passion for pop culture fandom, backed by familiar faces from the past few years, paired with allies from the worlds of fashion and entertainment.
Thrilljoy and its core product line, PIX!, embrace “the thrill of the chase” and “the joy of community.”
The Toy Book caught up with Mariotti at NYCC to experience the new world of Thrilljoy from a conversation in its sprawling booth — planted firmly adjacent to Funko — to its first-ever panel and a packed rooftop party amid the concrete jungle of Manhattan.
James Zahn (The Toy Book): You are reimagining the collectibles experience a little bit.
Brian Mariotti: I think so. Retirement didn’t do too well for me after Funko. By about the third week, I thought I was gonna kill myself, so that went out the window. After thinking about building the world’s largest pickleball court-meets-nightclub-meets-sports bar, I couldn’t find the right location in San Diego, so I just said, “Alright, I love creating pop-culture toys and collectibles, so maybe I’ll go back into that. Maybe I can do it where I fund it myself and can do whatever the Hell I want and have crazy ideas and not have to answer to anybody.
Five months later, we’re here.
JZ: At Licensing Expo, we crossed paths but did not interact with each other as we were going in opposite directions, and you were moving swiftly…
BM: With my little cart of samples!
JZ: Yes! You had a posse, and [Thrilljoy co-founder and CCO] Dolly Ahluwalia [Former Funko Senior Vice President of Licensing & Innovation] was with you alongside a small group. Was that the beginning?
BM: I went to China with some design ideas and wanted to see if I could make them happen at the price points I felt were fair. When I got back, I told Dolly, “We’ve got six days, and I think I want to go to Vegas for the Licensing Expo. I have some samples. What do you think?” She said everyone was booked solid, but we made some calls, and everyone said “Yes” to us at the highest level.
We went to Warner Bros., Netflix, and Paramount and got the most amazing reception from what we showed them. We told them we came to them first because we were thinking about opening this thing up at New York Comic Con and only had five months to do it, so we had to move on it. They were amazing partners, and here we are.
JZ: Speed-to-market is something that we talk about a lot in the toy side of the business, and now we’re discussing it a lot with collectibles and games. The traditional process was always set at this 18-month benchmark, and you shrunk it once at Funko, and now you’ve done it again. Now that you know it can be done in five months, will that be the norm moving forward?
BM: I think so. We’re always gonna plan, and we can go back and say that we’re gonna do my three favorite cereal monsters from a certain brand from the ‘70s and plan that in advance. But if something comes down the pipeline, say Wild Robot — what an amazing movie — that’s where if pop culture has a major moment, a zeitgeist, can we move mountains to get something done? I think the answer is yes, and we can do it in well under five months.
JZ: Now, let me ask you about the guy we’re standing next to, the life-sized Bloo. What can you tell us about this guy?
BM: We love mascots, and we loved Freddy Funko. I have an obsession with the Yeti at the Matterhorn ride at Disneyland and Bumble from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, so I’m always a Yeti kind of guy. He’s a Yeti, he has horns, and he wears a Thrilljoy jumpsuit. Bloo thinks he’s the pop culture king and knows everything about pop culture. We wanted a brand mascot who wants to interact with all our brand licenses, so you’ll see that a lot in our Mega PIX! We’re previewing the series at this event, and all of them will be on sale within the next 3-4 weeks. We wanted to show what a 12-inch, highly articulated, magnetic accessory, luxury packaged, highly stylized vinyl figure would look like.
We did Bloo x Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Bloo x Freddy Krueger, and Bloo x Blue Eye Samurai. We love the idea that Bloo wants to be in the mix with all our cool licensing partners. We’re excited about who Bloo is, and he’s our guy!
JZ: Backing up a minute, you mentioned a trio of cereal monsters earlier, why do the other two guys always get left out?
BM: Well, they don’t get left out with me! It’s Yummy Mummy and Fruit Brute if we’re talking about the same thing, which we might be…
JZ: Oh, we just might be.
BM: Those characters were well represented in Funko, so all five [of the General Mills Monsters] — I know there’s a new one, but I’m not counting her because I don’t know her…
JZ: Ghoulia Apple-something, I believe… [Note: It’s Carmella Creeper]
BM: It’s Fruit Brute, Yummy Mummy, Franken-Berry, Boo-Berry, and Count Chocula — always the five.
JZ: Shifting focus from the company’s background to the core product line, PIX! You’ve developed this so it can be displayed on its own or in the package. Can the figures come out?
BM: No, they cannot.
JZ: So they remain in sort of a shadow box?
BM: That’s a good way of looking at it. I look at PIX! as a 180-degree diorama. To me, it’s storytelling. I didn’t want to show up in front of licensors in Las Vegas with just a figure. I wanted to show them what storytelling is in a moment in pop culture that we can immortalize.
The picture frame tells a story. Van Gogh’s ornate gold frame looks like it could be in a museum. Blue Eye Samurai’s got a black bamboo frame that’s blood-splattered. Huckleberry Hound has a cartoon frame with a colored stripe that matches the interior. So the frame is storytelling and there are two places on the frame where we can put the date, the character name, and the license, so that’s storytelling. The art is storytelling. The lenticular authenticity card sandwiched between two acrylics and magnetic is storytelling. The box opens with a magnetic closure and you pull out the blister, pull out the PIX!, and they can stack on top of each other or you can hang it on a wall.
We wanted all of that to be in one format because there are a million different companies doing figures, and a lot of them do figures really, really well. We wanted to be different and unique.
Whether it’s LeBron James breaking the scoring title, Patrick Mahomes winning a Super Bowl, Michael Jordan hitting the game-winning shot for North Carolina as a freshman, or a musician, band, or a moment in time, that’s what we want to capture in PIX!
While the Thrilljoy model is largely direct-to-consumer across PIX!, MEGA PIX!, and Thrilljoy Threads (ultra-limited fashion drops), Hot Topic and BoxLunch are onboard as retail partners to extend the brand’s reach.
Paired with premium packaging and pricing, the “thrill of the chase” is a key part of the Thrilljoy experience and a familiar element for those who followed Funko’s growth. Each Thrilljoy PIX! collectible presents fans with 1-in-6 odds of scoring a limited-edition chase variant. The company is also releasing SUPER Chase items, with as few as 98 pieces issued for special events. And, for truly rare occasions, such as NYCC, Thrilljoy’s ULTRA Chase items are limited to just 24 pieces.
Left to Right: Brian Mariotti, Dolly Ahluwalia, MD Young, Eric Peng Cheng, and Karissa Marston
Left to Right: Brian Mariotti, Khleo Thomas, Adam McArthur, Sal ‘Kickstradomis’ Amezcua, and Karissa Marston
The Thrilljoy panel at NYCC.
Partners joining Mariotti and Ahluwalia in Thrilljoy include former Loungefly exec Karissa Marston as Director of Marketing, Eric Peng Cheng, Owner of Undefeated, and MD Young, owner of MINDstyle International.
The company’s inaugural Fan Advisory Board includes a trio of individuals with a stake in the company, including Khleo Thomas, Sal ‘Kickstradomis’ Amezcua, and Adam McArthur.
Beginning next month, the company plans limited product drops with themed weeks built around Harry Potter, Scooby-Doo, MTV, and more.
Additionally, speed-to-market is an important factor in Thrilljoy’s forthcoming Moo Deng collectible. According to Mariotti, a portion of proceeds from the sale of each Moo Deng PIX! will benefit the Khao Kheow Open Zoo in Si Racha, Chonburi, Thailand.
Keep tabs on what the company is up to at thrilljoy.com
