Funko Pop figures, the ubiquitous bobblehead collectibles that have obliterated the plastic toy competition through sheer volume, are getting their own video game. Funko Fusion will bring together pop culture properties like Jurassic World, Back to the Future, The Umbrella Academy, The Thing, Child’s Play 2, Masters of the Universe, and Shaun of the Dead into a singular experience early next year.
The first trailer for Funko Fusion shows what a peculiar prospect that is. Sitting alongside family-friendly fare like He-Man and Marty McFly time traveling back to 1985 is the chaotic carnage of dinosaurs eating Funko Pop people and the shock horror of Dr. Copper having both of his arms amputated by the Norris monster from John Carpenter’s The Thing. It’s a slightly darker take on the formula of toy-based games like TT Games’ licensed Lego titles or Disney Infinity, but what better vector to introduce kids to body horror?
The team behind Funko Fusion is 10:10 Games, which was founded by former TT Games folks. Based on short snippets of gameplay seen in the trailer, it appears Funko fans can expect an experience similar to efforts like Lego Star Wars and Lego Harry Potter — recreations of familiar movie moments in much sillier toy form. Players will “battle enemies, explore vast environments, and solve intriguing puzzles,” Funko and Universal Games said in a news release. Online multiplayer will let up to four players immerse themselves in pop culture mashups.
“It’s incredibly exciting to be able to show everyone what the team here at 10:10 Games has been up to,” said Arthur Parsons, 10:10 Games’ design director and co-founder, in a news release. “Harnessing the incredible properties we’ve been entrusted with by our partners at Universal Games and Digital Platforms, bringing them together into a gaming experience that is incredibly fun, surprising, authentic, and celebrates fandom like never before, all experienced through a Funko lens.”
Developers promise “dozens of playable characters in Funko Pop! form from popular NBCUniversal stories” — including Universal’s slate of famous monsters — in addition to other unannounced properties.
Funko Fusion is slated for release sometime in 2024 on PC and unspecified consoles. Given the Funko brand’s broad reach, expect it to be on every console.
Funko has previously flirted with video games in the form of Gears Pop, a mobile real-time strategy game based on Microsoft’s Gears of War franchise. Gears Pop was released in 2019, and shut down in 2021. Funko also publishes tabletop games, many of which are (unsurprisingly) based on popular franchises, including Fast and Furious, The Goonies, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Jurassic World, and The Warriors.
Funko itself is a 25-year-old company that got its start making Big Boy banks and bobbleheads based on Austin Powers and breakfast cereal mascots. Over the past few decades, the company has licensed hundreds of characters from movies, TV, comic books, anime, and video games, becoming a staple of pop culture stores like Hot Topic and GameStop. An animated film based on the Funko Pop brand was announced by Warner Bros and Funko in 2019.