Welcome to Flashback Friday: The Marvel Cinematic Universe. In this series you’ll get a discussion and brief review on some of your favorite Pops and Dorbz from the MCU. Here, we really appreciate the shared universe so the figures will come from film, television, and streaming. Loki from the first ever MCU set is this week’s choice for discussion.
Discussion: The character of Loki played brilliantly by Tom Hiddleston first debuted in the MCU way back in 2011 in the first Thor film. He would go on to bigger and better things in Thor: The Dark World and Avengers. Funko released their first set based off of an MCU film starting with Thor. In fact, the Pops that were released for Thor were the first ever Marvel Pops numbered 01 and 02 respectively. While Thor is about learning and getting invested in the titular hero which the audience embraced for the most part it is arguably Loki who breaks out and has become beloved by MCU fans around the world. Even though Loki is traditionally a villain he has become so popular that he has more Pops than Thor.
Funko usually gives us a decent number of Pops and good variety within each set but since the Thor set was the first one released they sure kept the number to the bare minimum. There were only two Pops in the entire set which are Thor 01 and Loki 02. I feel like that’s a missed opportunity because there were other memorable characters in the film. Odin, Jane Foster, Erik Selvig, Darcy Lewis, Heimdall, Volstagg, Hogun, Fandral, Sif, Frigga, and even Agent Coulson and Hawkeye. As you can see the film was ripe for a bunch of Pop characters to debut. I hope Funko creates brand new Pops for some of the characters that are mentioned above because now they have precedence of going to back to previous MCU properties and giving fans what they want. For example, at ECCC they released an exclusive Captain America and the box said First Avenger. This tells me that not only are they okay going back to previous films that didn’t have a set but they could and probably will add characters they missed the first time around.
As you can imagine the price on Loki isn’t cheap seeing as he’s one of the first two Marvel Pops ever created. Since the released year was 2011 I’m not quite sure what the production size was nor do I know where Loki was available. I’d imagine that the normal stores where we can get Pops now didn’t carry Funko items back in the day so it’s a mystery to me. I know if you’re looking for this particular Loki right now you’ll want to check eBay and our very own Facebook group for availability. The link to the group can be found right here. I’m seeing prices between $80.00 and $100.00 so you’ll definitely be shelling out some cash to add Loki to your collection.
Description/Review: Loki is wearing his trademark helmet but its silver here which is different than the gold we saw in Avengers. The upper and lower clothing on the body is green. His upper body is covered in silver armor from the waist and chest to his arms. The interior of the cape looks green while the exterior looks silver. The boots he wears are black. For this being the first Loki Pop it’s fairly decent. Obviously the designs have been getting better and better which makes this one look outdated compared to several of the newer ones. I would’ve liked to see him wielding a staff but maybe that was too much to ask for during the early stages of Funko’s MCU run. I’d kind of like to see Funko redo some of their older Pops and see what they’d look like now and compare the two.
What’s next for Loki? Loki can next be seen in the upcoming November release Thor: Ragnarok which has been confirmed in the trailers. Beyond Ragnarok I’d expect to see Loki appear in at least one Avengers: Infinity War film if not both. He should be getting at least two or three Pops in the Ragnarok set and one or two in the Infinity War set. Keep an eye out for new Loki Pops over the next year make sure to see all of the upcoming MCU films including Spider-Man: Homecoming in July, Thor: Ragnarok in November, Black Panther in February, and Avengers: Infinity War in May.
What are your thoughts on the first ever Loki Pop? Sound off in the comments section below.
Would you like to see a specific Pop or Dorbz in a future article? Post your choice in the comments section and you just might see your favorite character “Pop” up in the coming weeks.
Check back next week for another MCU flashback. Excelsior!
Matt Norris