2/9/21 Update: Additional info posted here

Funko is a good company with solid performance that is still trading at a reasonable price. Check out my DD below:
​
Funko (FNKO)
Share Price (1/28/21) : $11.97
Share Price (09/16/19) : $27.86
Short Interest (1/26/21) : 14%
Next Earnings Release: March 2021
Funko Inc. is an American company that manufactures licensed pop culture collectibles, best known for its licensed vinyl figurines and bobbleheads. They have over 1,000 licenses across music, video games, film, TV, sports and many other pop culture properties. Some of their most popular licensed brands include Marvel, Disney, Star Wars, Pokemon, Fortnite, NBA, NFL, MLB, DC Comics, and a variety of anime properties.
Several points below support the belief that Funko’s revenue grew during the 2020 holiday season and could continue well into 2021:
· Increasing search traffic for Funko products
· Direct sales growth is driving increased revenue and profitability
· Parents are buying more gifts for their kids due to COVID
· People have more disposable income from staying at home and not going out
· Expansion of new products and licensees continuing through 2021
· Collectible investments like Funko POP! figures are exploding in value and popularity
· Recent analyst commentary, valuation, and financials are positive
FUNKO’S SEARCH TRAFFIC REACHES AN ALL-TIME HIGH IN Q4 2020
“Funko” google trends search traffic was up 20-30% in Q4 2020 (vs. Q4 2019)
Searches for “Funko” were up 2x in December vs the beginning of November 2020
After falling in December, “Funko” searches are trending back up to all-time-high levels
FUNKO’S DIRECT SALES INITIATIVES DRIVING HIGHER REVENUE & MARGIN
Funko Direct Sales (B2C) grew significantly in Q3 and likely to continue into Q4
· B2C business as a percentage of sales increased to 8% in Q3 2020 from 4% during the prior year.
· Funko’s e-commerce site grew over 150% vs. the prior year in Q3 2020
· The number of SKU’s on Funko’s e-commerce site rose tenfold since June 2020
“We went from only 200 of our own products [on our website] as late as June this year, to now well over 2,000 products available on our website.” – Funko CEO, Brian Mariotti
Funko’s first ever Selena Pop! sold out online in just 40 minutes.
Funko’s Q3 2020 Gross Profit % and Operating Margin % were near all-time-highs for the company
· Funko’s Q3 Gross Profit Percentage of 38.6% was its second highest ever (behind only Q1 2020)
· Funko’s Q3 Operating Profit Percentage of 10.8% was its second highest ever (behind only Q4 2018)
· As Funko continues to grow it’s B2C e-commerce sales in Q4 and beyond, it is possible that gross profit and operating profit percentages could rise as well
Retail customers were able to shift their Brick & Mortar inventory to their e-commerce channels to Funko unit sales
· Funko resellers who didn’t sell online were severely impacted by Brick & Mortar closures during COVID stay-at-home orders. As 2020 progressed, some of these retailers were able to create online stores (e.g.- Shopify, Amazon, eBay, etc.) through which they could sell their Funko inventory.
· Larger retailers that already had an omni-channel presence were able to shift their sales inventory from their Brick & Mortar stores to online fulfilment.
Funko has also created a mini-Pop! factory at its headquarters where customers can make their own custom Funko at a price of $25 each
· According to Funko, you can customize your Pop! using thousands of combinations. It’s “Think Build-A-Bear meets Funko Pop!” according to CEO Brian Mariotti.
· With a $25 price point, the margins are likely higher than the average Pop! figure that retails for between $10 to $15
PARENTS BUYING MORE GIFTS FOR THEIR KIDS DUE TO COVID
Parents likely splurged on their kids out of guilt of having shelter at home because of restrictions and to keep them occupied while they had to work at home.
· “Faced with rising transmission of the virus, state restrictions on retailers and heightened political and economic uncertainty, consumers chose to spend on gifts that lifted the spirits of their families and friends and provided a sense of normalcy given the challenging year. We believe President-elect Biden’s stimulus proposal, with direct payments to families and individuals, and further aid for small businesses and tools to keep businesses open, will keep the economy growing.” NRF President Matthew Shay
· “2020 was an unprecedented year for the U.S. toy industry. The growth we’ve seen in the toy industry speaks to the fact that parents are willing to put their children’s happiness above all else. The industry’s resiliency is very much underpinned by the reality that, in times of hardship, families look to toys to help keep their children engaged, active, and delighted. Put simply, toys are a big part of the happiness equation.” Juli Lennett - VP, U.S. Toys at NPD
Toy sales were strong in 2020 as US retail sales of toys was up 16% vs 2019; driven by pandemic spending
· According to NPD, “Much of the growth in 2020 was directly correlated to the COVID-19 pandemic and the changing consumer behavior associated with widespread lockdowns and school closures, the disposable income diverted from other types of entertainment to toys, as well as the onset of federal stimulus checks.”
Consumer spending on toys increased measurably due to lockdowns; with strong performance continuing through the holidays
· Per NPD, “While toy sales through mid-March 2020 were flat vs. 2019, widespread lockdown measures led to an abrupt increase in sales. This was further amplified by the distribution of stimulus checks beginning in April, resulting in the strongest month of growth for the year in May (+38%). Toy industry growth peaked again in October with an increase of 33% when the holiday season kicked off with Amazon Prime Day along with other retailer deals the same week.”
Key retail sources reporting significant sales growth during Q4 2020 suggest Funko sales performance was strong
· Target Q4 sales were fantastic showing signs of retail strength with a consumer that overlaps well with the Funko
> Overall comparable sales were up 17.2%
> Comparable digital sales were up over 100%
> Store-originated comparable sales were up 4.2%
> Store traffic was up 4.3%
> Average ticket size was up 12.3%
· GameStop Q4 sales were solid; showing additional potential for Funko sales
> Same store sales were up 4.8% in Q4 2020
> Online sales increased 309% in Q4 2020
· According to the NRF, 2020 Holiday Retail Sales were up 8.3% compared to the prior year despite the pandemic
> A surge in online shopping drove the increase (rising 32% vs. 2019)
> The increase of 8.3% was over double the average increase of 3.5% that the industry had seen over the last five years.
MORE DISPOSABLE INCOME TO SPEND AT HOME BY NOT GOING OUT
The National Retail Federation (NRF) says that strong retail performance has been driven by consumers with stimulus checks and extra savings from not going out or traveling
· “There was a massive boost to consumer wallets this season. Consumers were able to splurge on holiday gifts because of increased money in their bank accounts from the stimulus payments they received earlier in the year and the money they saved by not traveling, dining out, or attending entertainment events” – NRF Chief Economist Jack Kleinhenz.
Spending on “experiences” fell significantly in 2020
· The US Travel Association forecasts that spending on travel fell $500 billion in 2020 from $1.1 trillion in 2019
> The industry has lost about 40% of its direct travel jobs (about 3.5 million jobs) in 2020; driven by a reduction in business travel
> Foreign visitors to the US fell about 75% in 2020; driving a $119 billion reduction in travel spending
· Concert spending is down dramatically
> Live Nation reported a 98% decline in concert revenue in Q2 2020 and a 95% decline in concert revenue in Q3 2020
> About 5.2 million tickets were refunded in Q3 2020 and 23.3 million tickets had been refunded so far in 2020 (as of the end of Q3)
· Movie theater attendance is down substantially
> AMC theaters saw a 97% decline in attendance and a 91% decline in revenue in Q3 2020
> Cinemark saw a 96% decline in revenue
> Marcus Corporation (which also owns hotels and restaurants) saw a 84% decline in revenue
> Studio Movie Grill filed for bankruptcy
· Other anecdotal information points to more stay-at-home activity decreasing recreational spending
> Chuck E Cheese’s declared bankruptcy
> Dave & Busters is considering bankruptcy and plans layoffs of +1,000
> CiCi’s Pizza declares bankruptcy
> Starbucks saw fewer customers, reduced store hours, increased store closures, and a 5% decline in revenues in Q4 2020. This has led them to plan a shift to more “to-go” formats
> Many Las Vegas Hotels and Casinos have decided to close “part-time” during the week due to lower attendance and travel.
These include Encore, Rio, Linq, Planet Hollywood, Mandalay Bay, Park MGM, and Mirage
The majority of food buffets at the major hotels and casinos have been shuttered for the time being
Stimulus checks and other government programs to support consumer spending provide tailwinds for retail activity
· The US government authorized more than $10,000 per person in stimulus spending in 2020 over the course of five relief bills totaling $3.5 trillion
· More stimulus spending is expected; including a potential $1.9 trillion package that could include an additional $1,400 in stimulus checks
MORE SKUS / LICENSES ARE GROWING AND EXPECTED TO CONINUE STRONG
Active properties continue to rise and are expected to grow well into the future
· The number of active properties in Q3 2020 grew 15% over 2019
· Active properties grew from 644 in Q2 to 715 in Q3 2020
· The potential universe for Funko Pops! is limitless as new films, tv shows, musicians, anime characters, sports stars, and other media properties are created every year.
Some of the hot properties for this year and beyond
· Star Wars: Baby Yoda, Mandalorian, Rey, Valentine’s Day, etc.
· Marvel: WandaVision, Deadpool, Lucha Libre, Spiderman, Venom
· Anime: Dragon Ball Z, Naruto, Bakugan, My Hero Academia
· Films: Harry Potter, The Goonies, The Mummy, Fast & Furious
· TV: The Office, Umbrella Academy, The Queen’s Gambit, The Simpsons
· Sports: NFL, NBA, MLB, WWE
· Others: Disney, Pokemon, etc.
Retail exclusives can grow the potential universe of licenses and increase retailer buy-in
· For example: A retailer like GameStop could lobby Funko to make a GameStop exclusive of the WallStreetBets Kid like this person suggested here. (The exclusive Pop! would be made into a limited edition and sold only to GameStop to sell at their stores)
COLLECTIBLE INVESTMENTS ARE GROWING IN VALUE & POPULARITY
· Funko: The average Pops! Figure has a retail price from between $10 and $15 which allows most people an affordable entry point into collecting. Over time some Pops! Figures increase substantially in price; from $50 to $100 to even several thousand dollars. While some collectors buy Pops! as primarily an investment, many more buy them as a way to show their fandom. Whether they are avid Star Wars, Harry Potter, Pokemon, Sports, or Anime fans; collectors build large collections and show them off to friends.
· Sports Cards: To those paying attention, sports cards have been on a massive run with some cards worth more than your parent’s house and your sister’s car. Since the pandemic started, the demand for sports collectibles from basketball to football to soccer (and many others) has skyrocketed. Countless videos of box-breaks and pack openings have become the norm on social media. Some of these boxes are being purchased for tens of thousands with “hits” ranging from several hundred to hundreds of thousands.
· Collector’s Universe: This company that grades sports cards and other collectibles has tripled in value since June 2020. The number of sports collectors grading cards has exploded as demand rises. The popularity of grading sports cards is expected to maintain as prices continue to rise and the hobby becomes more mainstream.
ANALYST COMMENTARY AND FINANCIALS ARE A POSTIVE FOR THE STOCK
Piper Sandler: Upgraded Funko from “Neutral” to “Overweight” (raising their price target from $6 to $12).
· Analyst Erin Murphy sees evidence of “subsequent revenue pillars” with their recent launch of Snapsies at 800 Target stores; along with an expansion into board games and its digital efforts, which include a newly launched website in six European countries.
Valuation Comparison: Market Cap / Revenue (TTM)
· Funko: MC - $604 million / Rev - $640 million (0.9x sales)
· Mattel: MC - $6.27 billion / Rev - $4.43 billion (1.4x sales)
· Hasbro: MC - $13.13 billion / Rev - $5.17 billion (2.5x sales)
Key Financial Trends For Funko
· Q3 2020 EPS (Adjusted) = $0.31
> Third highest ever (only Q4 2018 & Q3 2019 were higher)
· Q3 2020 Revenue = $191 million
> Fourth highest ever (only Q4 2018, Q3 2019, and Q4 2019 were higher)
· Q3 2020 Revenue increase vs prior quarter of 94%
> Q1 and Q2 2020 saw significant declines due to COVID
> Q3 2020 only down 14% vs Q3 2019 despite Q2 2020 being down 49%
> Q3 2020 strength driven by Funko adapting quickly to online in the US market. (Q4 2020 revenue growth could be aided substantially by Funko’s development of their e-commerce shop in Europe.)
· Q3 2020 SG&A was reduced 20% vs. the prior year as Funko rationalizes costs and adjusts to focus more on D2C e-commerce
TL;DR
After a tough summer, Funko sales have rocketed back in Q3 to near where they were pre-pandemic; setting up a potentially historic earnings for Q4 2020. Google search activity suggests that Funko is as popular as ever and is set up well for a strong year in 2021. People are spending less on “going out;” instead buying things to use at home and presents for their kids. As time passes, Funko’s status as a popular collectible only continues to gain momentum.
Their direct sales initiative allows Funko to capture additional margin by sidestepping traditional brick and mortar retail to reach their customers. Investments in collectible products like Pops! and sports cards continue to increase in popularity and price. And the company continues to release even more products beyond Pops!; including games and apparel. While some Wall Street Analysts have already begun to take notice, a strong Q4 earnings announcement can drive even more attention to the stock.
Positions: Long Shares & Calls
Disclosure: I am long FNKO. This is not investment advice. I reserve the right to buy or sell FNKO without updating this thread. Do your own research and share (or not share) with the community in this thread. Thank you to the others on Reddit that shared this idea earlier.
Feedback: If you have any additional information, ideas, or critiques please make sure to comment. It is great to get the perspective of others when making an investment. Also that information can be incorporated into future posts and updates.
Previous DD: Herman Miller

Hi all,
To celebrate the return of Undervalued to the Reddit community, I decided to put together a quick DD and post it on a stock that I have had my eye on for a little while. It's still a "work-in-progress" and I may potentially update it later on Reddit with more information or detail if I have time at some point in the future.
If you have any opinions, thoughts, or additional information, please share it. Positive. Negative. Neutral. All information is helpful and informative to the community. (I thought the feedback received from my first DD posted to this sub was quite helpful and I look forward to what you have to say.)
Thank you to u/BuyLowSellNever for turning the sub back on; allowing us to share and discuss ideas with the broader community in a thoughtful and respectful manner. Best wishes. - LA

Funko (FNKO)
Share Price (1/28/21) : $11.97
Share Price (09/16/19) : $27.86
Short Interest (1/26/21) : 14%
Next Earnings Release: March 2021
Funko Inc. is an American company that manufactures licensed pop culture collectibles, best known for its licensed vinyl figurines and bobbleheads. They have over 1,000 licenses across music, video games, film, TV, sports and many other pop culture properties. Some of their most popular licensed brands include Marvel, Disney, Star Wars, Pokemon, Fortnite, NBA, NFL, MLB, DC Comics, and a variety of anime properties.
Several points below support the belief that Funko’s revenue grew during the 2020 holiday season and could continue well into 2021:
· Increasing search traffic for Funko products
· Direct sales growth is driving increased revenue and profitability
· Parents are buying more gifts for their kids due to COVID
· People have more disposable income from staying at home and not going out
· Expansion of new products and licensees continuing through 2021
· Collectible investments like Funko POP! figures are exploding in value and popularity
· Recent analyst commentary, valuation, and financials are positive
FUNKO’S SEARCH TRAFFIC REACHES AN ALL-TIME HIGH IN Q4 2020
“Funko” google trends search traffic was up 20-30% in Q4 2020 (vs. Q4 2019)
Searches for “Funko” were up 2x in December vs the beginning of November 2020
After falling in December, “Funko” searches are trending back up to all-time-high levels
FUNKO’S DIRECT SALES INITIATIVES DRIVING HIGHER REVENUE & MARGIN
Funko Direct Sales (B2C) grew significantly in Q3 and likely to continue into Q4
· B2C business as a percentage of sales increased to 8% in Q3 2020 from 4% during the prior year.
· Funko’s e-commerce site grew over 150% vs. the prior year in Q3 2020
· The number of SKU’s on Funko’s e-commerce site rose tenfold since June 2020
“We went from only 200 of our own products [on our website] as late as June this year, to now well over 2,000 products available on our website.” – Funko CEO, Brian Mariotti
Funko’s first ever Selena Pop! sold out online in just 40 minutes.
Funko’s Q3 2020 Gross Profit % and Operating Margin % were near all-time-highs for the company
· Funko’s Q3 Gross Profit Percentage of 38.6% was its second highest ever (behind only Q1 2020)
· Funko’s Q3 Operating Profit Percentage of 10.8% was its second highest ever (behind only Q4 2018)
· As Funko continues to grow it’s B2C e-commerce sales in Q4 and beyond, it is possible that gross profit and operating profit percentages could rise as well
Retail customers were able to shift their Brick & Mortar inventory to their e-commerce channels to Funko unit sales
· Funko resellers who didn’t sell online were severely impacted by Brick & Mortar closures during COVID stay-at-home orders. As 2020 progressed, some of these retailers were able to create online stores (e.g.- Shopify, Amazon, eBay, etc.) through which they could sell their Funko inventory.
· Larger retailers that already had an omni-channel presence were able to shift their sales inventory from their Brick & Mortar stores to online fulfilment.
Funko has also created a mini-Pop! factory at its headquarters where customers can make their own custom Funko at a price of $25 each
· According to Funko, you can customize your Pop! using thousands of combinations. It’s “Think Build-A-Bear meets Funko Pop!” according to CEO Brian Mariotti.
· With a $25 price point, the margins are likely higher than the average Pop! figure that retails for between $10 to $15
PARENTS BUYING MORE GIFTS FOR THEIR KIDS DUE TO COVID
Parents likely splurged on their kids out of guilt of having shelter at home because of restrictions and to keep them occupied while they had to work at home.
· “Faced with rising transmission of the virus, state restrictions on retailers and heightened political and economic uncertainty, consumers chose to spend on gifts that lifted the spirits of their families and friends and provided a sense of normalcy given the challenging year. We believe President-elect Biden’s stimulus proposal, with direct payments to families and individuals, and further aid for small businesses and tools to keep businesses open, will keep the economy growing.” NRF President Matthew Shay
· “2020 was an unprecedented year for the U.S. toy industry. The growth we’ve seen in the toy industry speaks to the fact that parents are willing to put their children’s happiness above all else. The industry’s resiliency is very much underpinned by the reality that, in times of hardship, families look to toys to help keep their children engaged, active, and delighted. Put simply, toys are a big part of the happiness equation.” Juli Lennett - VP, U.S. Toys at NPD
Toy sales were strong in 2020 as US retail sales of toys was up 16% vs 2019; driven by pandemic spending
· According to NPD, “Much of the growth in 2020 was directly correlated to the COVID-19 pandemic and the changing consumer behavior associated with widespread lockdowns and school closures, the disposable income diverted from other types of entertainment to toys, as well as the onset of federal stimulus checks.”
Consumer spending on toys increased measurably due to lockdowns; with strong performance continuing through the holidays
· Per NPD, “While toy sales through mid-March 2020 were flat vs. 2019, widespread lockdown measures led to an abrupt increase in sales. This was further amplified by the distribution of stimulus checks beginning in April, resulting in the strongest month of growth for the year in May (+38%). Toy industry growth peaked again in October with an increase of 33% when the holiday season kicked off with Amazon Prime Day along with other retailer deals the same week.”
Key retail sources reporting significant sales growth during Q4 2020 suggest Funko sales performance was strong
· Target Q4 sales were fantastic showing signs of retail strength with a consumer that overlaps well with the Funko
> Overall comparable sales were up 17.2%
> Comparable digital sales were up over 100%
> Store-originated comparable sales were up 4.2%
> Store traffic was up 4.3%
> Average ticket size was up 12.3%
· GameStop Q4 sales were solid; showing additional potential for Funko sales
> Same store sales were up 4.8% in Q4 2020
> Online sales increased 309% in Q4 2020
· According to the NRF, 2020 Holiday Retail Sales were up 8.3% compared to the prior year despite the pandemic
> A surge in online shopping drove the increase (rising 32% vs. 2019)
> The increase of 8.3% was over double the average increase of 3.5% that the industry had seen over the last five years.
MORE DISPOSABLE INCOME TO SPEND AT HOME BY NOT GOING OUT
The National Retail Federation (NRF) says that strong retail performance has been driven by consumers with stimulus checks and extra savings from not going out or traveling
· “There was a massive boost to consumer wallets this season. Consumers were able to splurge on holiday gifts because of increased money in their bank accounts from the stimulus payments they received earlier in the year and the money they saved by not traveling, dining out, or attending entertainment events” – NRF Chief Economist Jack Kleinhenz.
Spending on “experiences” fell significantly in 2020
· The US Travel Association forecasts that spending on travel fell $500 billion in 2020 from $1.1 trillion in 2019
> The industry has lost about 40% of its direct travel jobs (about 3.5 million jobs) in 2020; driven by a reduction in business travel
> Foreign visitors to the US fell about 75% in 2020; driving a $119 billion reduction in travel spending
· Concert spending is down dramatically
> Live Nation reported a 98% decline in concert revenue in Q2 2020 and a 95% decline in concert revenue in Q3 2020
> About 5.2 million tickets were refunded in Q3 2020 and 23.3 million tickets had been refunded so far in 2020 (as of the end of Q3)
· Movie theater attendance is down substantially
> AMC theaters saw a 97% decline in attendance and a 91% decline in revenue in Q3 2020
> Cinemark saw a 96% decline in revenue
> Marcus Corporation (which also owns hotels and restaurants) saw a 84% decline in revenue
> Studio Movie Grill filed for bankruptcy
· Other anecdotal information points to more stay-at-home activity decreasing recreational spending
> Chuck E Cheese’s declared bankruptcy
> Dave & Busters is considering bankruptcy and plans layoffs of +1,000
> CiCi’s Pizza declares bankruptcy
> Starbucks saw fewer customers, reduced store hours, increased store closures, and a 5% decline in revenues in Q4 2020. This has led them to plan a shift to more “to-go” formats
> Many Las Vegas Hotels and Casinos have decided to close “part-time” during the week due to lower attendance and travel.
These include Encore, Rio, Linq, Planet Hollywood, Mandalay Bay, Park MGM, and Mirage
The majority of food buffets at the major hotels and casinos have been shuttered for the time being
Stimulus checks and other government programs to support consumer spending provide tailwinds for retail activity
· The US government authorized more than $10,000 per person in stimulus spending in 2020 over the course of five relief bills totaling $3.5 trillion
· More stimulus spending is expected; including a potential $1.9 trillion package that could include an additional $1,400 in stimulus checks
MORE SKUS / LICENSES ARE GROWING AND EXPECTED TO CONINUE STRONG
Active properties continue to rise and are expected to grow well into the future
· The number of active properties in Q3 2020 grew 15% over 2019
· Active properties grew from 644 in Q2 to 715 in Q3 2020
· The potential universe for Funko Pops! is limitless as new films, tv shows, musicians, anime characters, sports stars, and other media properties are created every year.
Some of the hot properties for this year and beyond
· Star Wars: Baby Yoda, Mandalorian, Rey, Valentine’s Day, etc.
· Marvel: WandaVision, Deadpool, Lucha Libre, Spiderman, Venom
· Anime: Dragon Ball Z, Naruto, Bakugan, My Hero Academia
· Films: Harry Potter, The Goonies, The Mummy, Fast & Furious
· TV: The Office, Umbrella Academy, The Queen’s Gambit, The Simpsons
· Sports: NFL, NBA, MLB, WWE
· Others: Disney, Pokemon, etc.
COLLECTIBLE INVESTMENTS ARE GROWING IN VALUE & POPULARITY
· Funko: The average Pops! Figure has a retail price from between $10 and $15 which allows most people an affordable entry point into collecting. Over time some Pops! Figures increase substantially in price; from $50 to $100 to even several thousand dollars. While some collectors buy Pops! as primarily an investment, many more buy them as a way to show their fandom. Whether they are avid Star Wars, Harry Potter, Pokemon, Sports, or Anime fans; collectors build large collections and show them off to friends.
· Sports Cards: To those paying attention, sports cards have been on a massive run with some cards worth more than your parent’s house and your sister’s car. Since the pandemic started, the demand for sports collectibles from basketball to football to soccer (and many others) has skyrocketed. Countless videos of box-breaks and pack openings have become the norm on social media. Some of these boxes are being purchased for tens of thousands with “hits” ranging from several hundred to hundreds of thousands.
· Collector’s Universe: This company that grades sports cards and other collectibles has tripled in value since June 2020. The number of sports collectors grading cards has exploded as demand rises. The popularity of grading sports cards is expected to maintain as prices continue to rise and the hobby becomes more mainstream.
ANALYST COMMENTARY AND FINANCIALS ARE A POSTIVE FOR THE STOCK
Piper Sandler: Upgraded Funko from “Neutral” to “Overweight” (raising their price target from $6 to $12).
· Analyst Erin Murphy sees evidence of “subsequent revenue pillars” with their recent launch of Snapsies at 800 Target stores; along with an expansion into board games and its digital efforts, which include a newly launched website in six European countries.
Valuation Comparison: Market Cap / Revenue (TTM)
· Funko: MC - $604 million / Rev - $640 million (0.9x sales)
· Mattel: MC - $6.27 billion / Rev - $4.43 billion (1.4x sales)
· Hasbro: MC - $13.13 billion / Rev - $5.17 billion (2.5x sales)
Key Financial Trends For Funko
· Q3 2020 EPS (Adjusted) = $0.31
> Third highest ever (only Q4 2018 & Q3 2019 were higher)
· Q3 2020 Revenue = $191 million
> Fourth highest ever (only Q4 2018, Q3 2019, and Q4 2019 were higher)
· Q3 2020 Revenue increase vs prior quarter of 94%
> Q1 and Q2 2020 saw significant declines due to COVID
> Q3 2020 only down 14% vs Q3 2019 despite Q2 2020 being down 49%
> Q3 2020 strength driven by Funko adapting quickly to online in the US market. (Q4 2020 revenue growth could be aided substantially by Funko’s development of their e-commerce shop in Europe.)
· Q3 2020 SG&A was reduced 20% vs. the prior year as Funko rationalizes costs and adjusts to focus more on D2C e-commerce
TL;DR
After a tough summer, Funko sales have rocketed back in Q3 to near where they were pre-pandemic; setting up a potentially historic earnings for Q4 2020. Google search activity suggests that Funko is as popular as ever and is set up well for a strong year in 2021. People are spending less on “going out;” instead buying things to use at home and presents for their kids. As time passes, Funko’s status as a popular collectible only continues to gain momentum.
Their direct sales initiative allows Funko to capture additional margin by sidestepping traditional brick and mortar retail to reach their customers. Investments in collectible products like Pops! and sports cards continue to increase in popularity and price. And the company continues to release even more products beyond Pops!; including games and apparel. While some Wall Street Analysts have already begun to take notice, a strong Q4 earnings announcement can drive even more attention to the stock.
Positions: Long Shares & Calls
Disclosure: I am long FNKO. This is not investment advice. I reserve the right to buy or sell FNKO without updating this thread. Do your own research and share (or not share) with the community in this thread. Thank you to the others on Reddit that shared this idea earlier.
Feedback: If you have any additional information, ideas, or critiques please make sure to comment. It is great to get the perspective of others when making an investment. Also that information can be incorporated into future posts and updates.

2/9/21 Update: Additional info posted here

2/9/21 Update: Additional info posted here

Funko is a good company with solid performance that is still trading at a reasonable price.
Check out my DD below:
Funko (FNKO)
Share Price (02/01/21) : $12.90
Share Price (09/16/19) : $27.86
Short Interest (1/26/21) : 14%
Next Earnings Release: March 2021
Funko Inc. is an American company that manufactures licensed pop culture collectibles, best known for its licensed vinyl figurines and bobbleheads. They have over 1,000 licenses across music, video games, film, TV, sports and many other pop culture properties. Some of their most popular licensed brands include Marvel, Disney, Star Wars, Pokemon, Fortnite, NBA, NFL, MLB, DC Comics, and a variety of anime properties.
Several points below support the belief that Funko’s revenue grew during the 2020 holiday season and could continue well into 2021:
· Increasing search traffic for Funko products
· Direct sales growth is driving increased revenue and profitability
· Parents are buying more gifts for their kids due to COVID
· People have more disposable income from staying at home and not going out
· Expansion of new products and licensees continuing through 2021
· Collectible investments like Funko POP! figures are exploding in value and popularity
· Recent analyst commentary, valuation, and financials are positive
FUNKO’S SEARCH TRAFFIC REACHES AN ALL-TIME HIGH IN Q4 2020
“Funko” google trends search traffic was up 20-30% in Q4 2020 (vs. Q4 2019)
Searches for “Funko” were up 2x in December vs the beginning of November 2020
After falling in December, “Funko” searches are trending back up to all-time-high levels
FUNKO’S DIRECT SALES INITIATIVES DRIVING HIGHER REVENUE & MARGIN
Funko Direct Sales (B2C) grew significantly in Q3 and likely to continue into Q4
· B2C business as a percentage of sales increased to 8% in Q3 2020 from 4% during the prior year.
· Funko’s e-commerce site grew over 150% vs. the prior year in Q3 2020
· The number of SKU’s on Funko’s e-commerce site rose tenfold since June 2020
“We went from only 200 of our own products [on our website] as late as June this year, to now well over 2,000 products available on our website.” – Funko CEO, Brian Mariotti
Funko’s first ever Selena Pop! sold out online in just 40 minutes.
Funko’s Q3 2020 Gross Profit % and Operating Margin % were near all-time-highs for the company
· Funko’s Q3 Gross Profit Percentage of 38.6% was its second highest ever (behind only Q1 2020)
· Funko’s Q3 Operating Profit Percentage of 10.8% was its second highest ever (behind only Q4 2018)
· As Funko continues to grow it’s B2C e-commerce sales in Q4 and beyond, it is possible that gross profit and operating profit percentages could rise as well
Retail customers were able to shift their Brick & Mortar inventory to their e-commerce channels to Funko unit sales
· Funko resellers who didn’t sell online were severely impacted by Brick & Mortar closures during COVID stay-at-home orders. As 2020 progressed, some of these retailers were able to create online stores (e.g.- Shopify, Amazon, eBay, etc.) through which they could sell their Funko inventory.
· Larger retailers that already had an omni-channel presence were able to shift their sales inventory from their Brick & Mortar stores to online fulfilment.
Funko has also created a mini-Pop! factory at its headquarters where customers can make their own custom Funko at a price of $25 each
· According to Funko, you can customize your Pop! using thousands of combinations. It’s “Think Build-A-Bear meets Funko Pop!” according to CEO Brian Mariotti.
· With a $25 price point, the margins are likely higher than the average Pop! figure that retails for between $10 to $15
PARENTS BUYING MORE GIFTS FOR THEIR KIDS DUE TO COVID
Parents likely splurged on their kids out of guilt of having shelter at home because of restrictions and to keep them occupied while they had to work at home.
· “Faced with rising transmission of the virus, state restrictions on retailers and heightened political and economic uncertainty, consumers chose to spend on gifts that lifted the spirits of their families and friends and provided a sense of normalcy given the challenging year. We believe President-elect Biden’s stimulus proposal, with direct payments to families and individuals, and further aid for small businesses and tools to keep businesses open, will keep the economy growing.” NRF President Matthew Shay
· “2020 was an unprecedented year for the U.S. toy industry. The growth we’ve seen in the toy industry speaks to the fact that parents are willing to put their children’s happiness above all else. The industry’s resiliency is very much underpinned by the reality that, in times of hardship, families look to toys to help keep their children engaged, active, and delighted. Put simply, toys are a big part of the happiness equation.” Juli Lennett - VP, U.S. Toys at NPD
Toy sales were strong in 2020 as US retail sales of toys was up 16% vs 2019; driven by pandemic spending
· According to NPD, “Much of the growth in 2020 was directly correlated to the COVID-19 pandemic and the changing consumer behavior associated with widespread lockdowns and school closures, the disposable income diverted from other types of entertainment to toys, as well as the onset of federal stimulus checks.”
Consumer spending on toys increased measurably due to lockdowns; with strong performance continuing through the holidays
· Per NPD, “While toy sales through mid-March 2020 were flat vs. 2019, widespread lockdown measures led to an abrupt increase in sales. This was further amplified by the distribution of stimulus checks beginning in April, resulting in the strongest month of growth for the year in May (+38%). Toy industry growth peaked again in October with an increase of 33% when the holiday season kicked off with Amazon Prime Day along with other retailer deals the same week.”
Key retail sources reporting significant sales growth during Q4 2020 suggest Funko sales performance was strong
· Target Q4 sales were fantastic showing signs of retail strength with a consumer that overlaps well with the Funko
> Overall comparable sales were up 17.2%
> Comparable digital sales were up over 100%
> Store-originated comparable sales were up 4.2%
> Store traffic was up 4.3%
> Average ticket size was up 12.3%
· GameStop Q4 sales were solid; showing additional potential for Funko sales
> Same store sales were up 4.8% in Q4 2020
> Online sales increased 309% in Q4 2020
· According to the NRF, 2020 Holiday Retail Sales were up 8.3% compared to the prior year despite the pandemic
> A surge in online shopping drove the increase (rising 32% vs. 2019)
> The increase of 8.3% was over double the average increase of 3.5% that the industry had seen over the last five years.
MORE DISPOSABLE INCOME TO SPEND AT HOME BY NOT GOING OUT
The National Retail Federation (NRF) says that strong retail performance has been driven by consumers with stimulus checks and extra savings from not going out or traveling
· “There was a massive boost to consumer wallets this season. Consumers were able to splurge on holiday gifts because of increased money in their bank accounts from the stimulus payments they received earlier in the year and the money they saved by not traveling, dining out, or attending entertainment events” – NRF Chief Economist Jack Kleinhenz.
Spending on “experiences” fell significantly in 2020
· The US Travel Association forecasts that spending on travel fell $500 billion in 2020 from $1.1 trillion in 2019
> The industry has lost about 40% of its direct travel jobs (about 3.5 million jobs) in 2020; driven by a reduction in business travel
> Foreign visitors to the US fell about 75% in 2020; driving a $119 billion reduction in travel spending
· Concert spending is down dramatically
> Live Nation reported a 98% decline in concert revenue in Q2 2020 and a 95% decline in concert revenue in Q3 2020
> About 5.2 million tickets were refunded in Q3 2020 and 23.3 million tickets had been refunded so far in 2020 (as of the end of Q3)
· Movie theater attendance is down substantially
> AMC theaters saw a 97% decline in attendance and a 91% decline in revenue in Q3 2020
> Cinemark saw a 96% decline in revenue
> Marcus Corporation (which also owns hotels and restaurants) saw a 84% decline in revenue
> Studio Movie Grill filed for bankruptcy
· Other anecdotal information points to more stay-at-home activity decreasing recreational spending
> Chuck E Cheese’s declared bankruptcy
> Dave & Busters is considering bankruptcy and plans layoffs of +1,000
> CiCi’s Pizza declares bankruptcy
> Starbucks saw fewer customers, reduced store hours, increased store closures, and a 5% decline in revenues in Q4 2020. This has led them to plan a shift to more “to-go” formats
> Many Las Vegas Hotels and Casinos have decided to close “part-time” during the week due to lower attendance and travel.
These include Encore, Rio, Linq, Planet Hollywood, Mandalay Bay, Park MGM, and Mirage
The majority of food buffets at the major hotels and casinos have been shuttered for the time being
Stimulus checks and other government programs to support consumer spending provide tailwinds for retail activity
· The US government authorized more than $10,000 per person in stimulus spending in 2020 over the course of five relief bills totaling $3.5 trillion
· More stimulus spending is expected; including a potential $1.9 trillion package that could include an additional $1,400 in stimulus checks
MORE SKUS / LICENSES ARE GROWING AND EXPECTED TO CONINUE STRONG
Active properties continue to rise and are expected to grow well into the future
· The number of active properties in Q3 2020 grew 15% over 2019
· Active properties grew from 644 in Q2 to 715 in Q3 2020
· The potential universe for Funko Pops! is limitless as new films, tv shows, musicians, anime characters, sports stars, and other media properties are created every year.
Some of the hot properties for this year and beyond
· Star Wars: Baby Yoda, Mandalorian, Rey, Valentine’s Day, etc.
· Marvel: WandaVision, Deadpool, Lucha Libre, Spiderman, Venom
· Anime: Dragon Ball Z, Naruto, Bakugan, My Hero Academia
· Films: Harry Potter, The Goonies, The Mummy, Fast & Furious
· TV: The Office, Umbrella Academy, The Queen’s Gambit, The Simpsons
· Sports: NFL, NBA, MLB, WWE
· Others: Disney, Pokemon, etc.
Retail exclusives can grow the potential universe of licenses and increase retailer buy-in
· For example: A retailer like GameStop could lobby Funko to make a GameStop exclusive of the WallStreetBets Kid like this person suggested here. (The exclusive Pop! would be made into a limited edition and sold only to GameStop to sell at their stores)
COLLECTIBLE INVESTMENTS ARE GROWING IN VALUE & POPULARITY
· Funko: The average Pops! Figure has a retail price from between $10 and $15 which allows most people an affordable entry point into collecting. Over time some Pops! Figures increase substantially in price; from $50 to $100 to even several thousand dollars. While some collectors buy Pops! as primarily an investment, many more buy them as a way to show their fandom. Whether they are avid Star Wars, Harry Potter, Pokemon, Sports, or Anime fans; collectors build large collections and show them off to friends.
· Sports Cards: To those paying attention, sports cards have been on a massive run with some cards worth more than your parent’s house and your sister’s car. Since the pandemic started, the demand for sports collectibles from basketball to football to soccer (and many others) has skyrocketed. Countless videos of box-breaks and pack openings have become the norm on social media. Some of these boxes are being purchased for tens of thousands with “hits” ranging from several hundred to hundreds of thousands.
· Collector’s Universe: This company that grades sports cards and other collectibles has tripled in value since June 2020. The number of sports collectors grading cards has exploded as demand rises. The popularity of grading sports cards is expected to maintain as prices continue to rise and the hobby becomes more mainstream.
ANALYST COMMENTARY AND FINANCIALS ARE A POSTIVE FOR THE STOCK
Piper Sandler: Upgraded Funko from “Neutral” to “Overweight” (raising their price target from $6 to $12).
· Analyst Erin Murphy sees evidence of “subsequent revenue pillars” with their recent launch of Snapsies at 800 Target stores; along with an expansion into board games and its digital efforts, which include a newly launched website in six European countries.
Valuation Comparison: Market Cap / Revenue (TTM)
· Funko: MC - $604 million / Rev - $640 million (0.9x sales)
· Mattel: MC - $6.27 billion / Rev - $4.43 billion (1.4x sales)
· Hasbro: MC - $13.13 billion / Rev - $5.17 billion (2.5x sales)
Key Financial Trends For Funko
· Q3 2020 EPS (Adjusted) = $0.31
> Third highest ever (only Q4 2018 & Q3 2019 were higher)
· Q3 2020 Revenue = $191 million
> Fourth highest ever (only Q4 2018, Q3 2019, and Q4 2019 were higher)
· Q3 2020 Revenue increase vs prior quarter of 94%
> Q1 and Q2 2020 saw significant declines due to COVID
> Q3 2020 only down 14% vs Q3 2019 despite Q2 2020 being down 49%
> Q3 2020 strength driven by Funko adapting quickly to online in the US market. (Q4 2020 revenue growth could be aided substantially by Funko’s development of their e-commerce shop in Europe.)
· Q3 2020 SG&A was reduced 20% vs. the prior year as Funko rationalizes costs and adjusts to focus more on D2C e-commerce
TL;DR
After a tough summer, Funko sales have rocketed back in Q3 to near where they were pre-pandemic; setting up a potentially historic earnings for Q4 2020. Google search activity suggests that Funko is as popular as ever and is set up well for a strong year in 2021. People are spending less on “going out;” instead buying things to use at home and presents for their kids. As time passes, Funko’s status as a popular collectible only continues to gain momentum.
Their direct sales initiative allows Funko to capture additional margin by sidestepping traditional brick and mortar retail to reach their customers. Investments in collectible products like Pops! and sports cards continue to increase in popularity and price. And the company continues to release even more products beyond Pops!; including games and apparel. While some Wall Street Analysts have already begun to take notice, a strong Q4 earnings announcement can drive even more attention to the stock.
Positions: Long Shares & Calls
Disclosure: I am long FNKO. This is not investment advice. I reserve the right to buy or sell FNKO without updating this thread. Do your own research and share (or not share) with the community in this thread. Thank you to the others on Reddit that shared this idea earlier.
Feedback: If you have any additional information, ideas, or critiques please make sure to comment. It is great to get the perspective of others when making an investment. Also that information can be incorporated into future posts and updates.
Previous DD: Herman Miller

2/9/21 Update: Additional info posted here

Hi everyone.
Funko is a great stock that I believe will do well this year. Internet search traffic for Funko has been increasing and is at all-time highs over the last couple of months. The company is selling more of their toys directly to customers through their e-commerce shop (which allows them to capture higher retail revenues than wholesale revenues). And demand for collectibles and toys continues to be strong.
Here is a DD I wrote on the company below. I would love to get your thoughts.

Funko (FNKO)
Share Price (1/28/21) : $11.97
Share Price (09/16/19) : $27.86
Short Interest (1/26/21) : 14%
Next Earnings Release: March 2021
Funko Inc. is an American company that manufactures licensed pop culture collectibles, best known for its licensed vinyl figurines and bobbleheads. They have over 1,000 licenses across music, video games, film, TV, sports and many other pop culture properties. Some of their most popular licensed brands include Marvel, Disney, Star Wars, Pokemon, Fortnite, NBA, NFL, MLB, DC Comics, and a variety of anime properties.
Several points below support the belief that Funko’s revenue grew during the 2020 holiday season and could continue well into 2021:
· Increasing search traffic for Funko products
· Direct sales growth is driving increased revenue and profitability
· Parents are buying more gifts for their kids due to COVID
· People have more disposable income from staying at home and not going out
· Expansion of new products and licensees continuing through 2021
· Collectible investments like Funko POP! figures are exploding in value and popularity
· Recent analyst commentary, valuation, and financials are positive
FUNKO’S SEARCH TRAFFIC REACHES AN ALL-TIME HIGH IN Q4 2020
“Funko” google trends search traffic was up 20-30% in Q4 2020 (vs. Q4 2019)
Searches for “Funko” were up 2x in December vs the beginning of November 2020
After falling in December, “Funko” searches are trending back up to all-time-high levels
FUNKO’S DIRECT SALES INITIATIVES DRIVING HIGHER REVENUE & MARGIN
Funko Direct Sales (B2C) grew significantly in Q3 and likely to continue into Q4
· B2C business as a percentage of sales increased to 8% in Q3 2020 from 4% during the prior year.
· Funko’s e-commerce site grew over 150% vs. the prior year in Q3 2020
· The number of SKU’s on Funko’s e-commerce site rose tenfold since June 2020
“We went from only 200 of our own products [on our website] as late as June this year, to now well over 2,000 products available on our website.” – Funko CEO, Brian Mariotti
Funko’s first ever Selena Pop! sold out online in just 40 minutes.
Funko’s Q3 2020 Gross Profit % and Operating Margin % were near all-time-highs for the company
· Funko’s Q3 Gross Profit Percentage of 38.6% was its second highest ever (behind only Q1 2020)
· Funko’s Q3 Operating Profit Percentage of 10.8% was its second highest ever (behind only Q4 2018)
· As Funko continues to grow it’s B2C e-commerce sales in Q4 and beyond, it is possible that gross profit and operating profit percentages could rise as well
Retail customers were able to shift their Brick & Mortar inventory to their e-commerce channels to Funko unit sales
· Funko resellers who didn’t sell online were severely impacted by Brick & Mortar closures during COVID stay-at-home orders. As 2020 progressed, some of these retailers were able to create online stores (e.g.- Shopify, Amazon, eBay, etc.) through which they could sell their Funko inventory.
· Larger retailers that already had an omni-channel presence were able to shift their sales inventory from their Brick & Mortar stores to online fulfilment.
Funko has also created a mini-Pop! factory at its headquarters where customers can make their own custom Funko at a price of $25 each
· According to Funko, you can customize your Pop! using thousands of combinations. It’s “Think Build-A-Bear meets Funko Pop!” according to CEO Brian Mariotti.
· With a $25 price point, the margins are likely higher than the average Pop! figure that retails for between $10 to $15
PARENTS BUYING MORE GIFTS FOR THEIR KIDS DUE TO COVID
Parents likely splurged on their kids out of guilt of having shelter at home because of restrictions and to keep them occupied while they had to work at home.
· “Faced with rising transmission of the virus, state restrictions on retailers and heightened political and economic uncertainty, consumers chose to spend on gifts that lifted the spirits of their families and friends and provided a sense of normalcy given the challenging year. We believe President-elect Biden’s stimulus proposal, with direct payments to families and individuals, and further aid for small businesses and tools to keep businesses open, will keep the economy growing.” NRF President Matthew Shay
· “2020 was an unprecedented year for the U.S. toy industry. The growth we’ve seen in the toy industry speaks to the fact that parents are willing to put their children’s happiness above all else. The industry’s resiliency is very much underpinned by the reality that, in times of hardship, families look to toys to help keep their children engaged, active, and delighted. Put simply, toys are a big part of the happiness equation.” Juli Lennett - VP, U.S. Toys at NPD
Toy sales were strong in 2020 as US retail sales of toys was up 16% vs 2019; driven by pandemic spending
· According to NPD, “Much of the growth in 2020 was directly correlated to the COVID-19 pandemic and the changing consumer behavior associated with widespread lockdowns and school closures, the disposable income diverted from other types of entertainment to toys, as well as the onset of federal stimulus checks.”
Consumer spending on toys increased measurably due to lockdowns; with strong performance continuing through the holidays
· Per NPD, “While toy sales through mid-March 2020 were flat vs. 2019, widespread lockdown measures led to an abrupt increase in sales. This was further amplified by the distribution of stimulus checks beginning in April, resulting in the strongest month of growth for the year in May (+38%). Toy industry growth peaked again in October with an increase of 33% when the holiday season kicked off with Amazon Prime Day along with other retailer deals the same week.”
Key retail sources reporting significant sales growth during Q4 2020 suggest Funko sales performance was strong
· Target Q4 sales were fantastic showing signs of retail strength with a consumer that overlaps well with the Funko
> Overall comparable sales were up 17.2%
> Comparable digital sales were up over 100%
> Store-originated comparable sales were up 4.2%
> Store traffic was up 4.3%
> Average ticket size was up 12.3%
· GameStop Q4 sales were solid; showing additional potential for Funko sales
> Same store sales were up 4.8% in Q4 2020
> Online sales increased 309% in Q4 2020
· According to the NRF, 2020 Holiday Retail Sales were up 8.3% compared to the prior year despite the pandemic
> A surge in online shopping drove the increase (rising 32% vs. 2019)
> The increase of 8.3% was over double the average increase of 3.5% that the industry had seen over the last five years.
MORE DISPOSABLE INCOME TO SPEND AT HOME BY NOT GOING OUT
The National Retail Federation (NRF) says that strong retail performance has been driven by consumers with stimulus checks and extra savings from not going out or traveling
· “There was a massive boost to consumer wallets this season. Consumers were able to splurge on holiday gifts because of increased money in their bank accounts from the stimulus payments they received earlier in the year and the money they saved by not traveling, dining out, or attending entertainment events” – NRF Chief Economist Jack Kleinhenz.
Spending on “experiences” fell significantly in 2020
· The US Travel Association forecasts that spending on travel fell $500 billion in 2020 from $1.1 trillion in 2019
> The industry has lost about 40% of its direct travel jobs (about 3.5 million jobs) in 2020; driven by a reduction in business travel
> Foreign visitors to the US fell about 75% in 2020; driving a $119 billion reduction in travel spending
· Concert spending is down dramatically
> Live Nation reported a 98% decline in concert revenue in Q2 2020 and a 95% decline in concert revenue in Q3 2020
> About 5.2 million tickets were refunded in Q3 2020 and 23.3 million tickets had been refunded so far in 2020 (as of the end of Q3)
· Movie theater attendance is down substantially
> AMC theaters saw a 97% decline in attendance and a 91% decline in revenue in Q3 2020
> Cinemark saw a 96% decline in revenue
> Marcus Corporation (which also owns hotels and restaurants) saw a 84% decline in revenue
> Studio Movie Grill filed for bankruptcy
· Other anecdotal information points to more stay-at-home activity decreasing recreational spending
> Chuck E Cheese’s declared bankruptcy
> Dave & Busters is considering bankruptcy and plans layoffs of +1,000
> CiCi’s Pizza declares bankruptcy
> Starbucks saw fewer customers, reduced store hours, increased store closures, and a 5% decline in revenues in Q4 2020. This has led them to plan a shift to more “to-go” formats
> Many Las Vegas Hotels and Casinos have decided to close “part-time” during the week due to lower attendance and travel.
These include Encore, Rio, Linq, Planet Hollywood, Mandalay Bay, Park MGM, and Mirage
The majority of food buffets at the major hotels and casinos have been shuttered for the time being
Stimulus checks and other government programs to support consumer spending provide tailwinds for retail activity
· The US government authorized more than $10,000 per person in stimulus spending in 2020 over the course of five relief bills totaling $3.5 trillion
· More stimulus spending is expected; including a potential $1.9 trillion package that could include an additional $1,400 in stimulus checks
MORE SKUS / LICENSES ARE GROWING AND EXPECTED TO CONINUE STRONG
Active properties continue to rise and are expected to grow well into the future
· The number of active properties in Q3 2020 grew 15% over 2019
· Active properties grew from 644 in Q2 to 715 in Q3 2020
· The potential universe for Funko Pops! is limitless as new films, tv shows, musicians, anime characters, sports stars, and other media properties are created every year.
Some of the hot properties for this year and beyond
· Star Wars: Baby Yoda, Mandalorian, Rey, Valentine’s Day, etc.
· Marvel: WandaVision, Deadpool, Lucha Libre, Spiderman, Venom
· Anime: Dragon Ball Z, Naruto, Bakugan, My Hero Academia
· Films: Harry Potter, The Goonies, The Mummy, Fast & Furious
· TV: The Office, Umbrella Academy, The Queen’s Gambit, The Simpsons
· Sports: NFL, NBA, MLB, WWE
· Others: Disney, Pokemon, etc.
COLLECTIBLE INVESTMENTS ARE GROWING IN VALUE & POPULARITY
· Funko: The average Pops! Figure has a retail price from between $10 and $15 which allows most people an affordable entry point into collecting. Over time some Pops! Figures increase substantially in price; from $50 to $100 to even several thousand dollars. While some collectors buy Pops! as primarily an investment, many more buy them as a way to show their fandom. Whether they are avid Star Wars, Harry Potter, Pokemon, Sports, or Anime fans; collectors build large collections and show them off to friends.
· Sports Cards: To those paying attention, sports cards have been on a massive run with some cards worth more than your parent’s house and your sister’s car. Since the pandemic started, the demand for sports collectibles from basketball to football to soccer (and many others) has skyrocketed. Countless videos of box-breaks and pack openings have become the norm on social media. Some of these boxes are being purchased for tens of thousands with “hits” ranging from several hundred to hundreds of thousands.
· Collector’s Universe: This company that grades sports cards and other collectibles has tripled in value since June 2020. The number of sports collectors grading cards has exploded as demand rises. The popularity of grading sports cards is expected to maintain as prices continue to rise and the hobby becomes more mainstream.
ANALYST COMMENTARY AND FINANCIALS ARE A POSTIVE FOR THE STOCK
Piper Sandler: Upgraded Funko from “Neutral” to “Overweight” (raising their price target from $6 to $12).
· Analyst Erin Murphy sees evidence of “subsequent revenue pillars” with their recent launch of Snapsies at 800 Target stores; along with an expansion into board games and its digital efforts, which include a newly launched website in six European countries.
Valuation Comparison: Market Cap / Revenue (TTM)
· Funko: MC - $604 million / Rev - $640 million (0.9x sales)
· Mattel: MC - $6.27 billion / Rev - $4.43 billion (1.4x sales)
· Hasbro: MC - $13.13 billion / Rev - $5.17 billion (2.5x sales)
Key Financial Trends For Funko
· Q3 2020 EPS (Adjusted) = $0.31
> Third highest ever (only Q4 2018 & Q3 2019 were higher)
· Q3 2020 Revenue = $191 million
> Fourth highest ever (only Q4 2018, Q3 2019, and Q4 2019 were higher)
· Q3 2020 Revenue increase vs prior quarter of 94%
> Q1 and Q2 2020 saw significant declines due to COVID
> Q3 2020 only down 14% vs Q3 2019 despite Q2 2020 being down 49%
> Q3 2020 strength driven by Funko adapting quickly to online in the US market. (Q4 2020 revenue growth could be aided substantially by Funko’s development of their e-commerce shop in Europe.)
· Q3 2020 SG&A was reduced 20% vs. the prior year as Funko rationalizes costs and adjusts to focus more on D2C e-commerce
TL;DR
After a tough summer, Funko sales have rocketed back in Q3 to near where they were pre-pandemic; setting up a potentially historic earnings for Q4 2020. Google search activity suggests that Funko is as popular as ever and is set up well for a strong year in 2021. People are spending less on “going out;” instead buying things to use at home and presents for their kids. As time passes, Funko’s status as a popular collectible only continues to gain momentum.
Their direct sales initiative allows Funko to capture additional margin by sidestepping traditional brick and mortar retail to reach their customers. Investments in collectible products like Pops! and sports cards continue to increase in popularity and price. And the company continues to release even more products beyond Pops!; including games and apparel. While some Wall Street Analysts have already begun to take notice, a strong Q4 earnings announcement can drive even more attention to the stock.
Positions: Long Shares & Calls
Disclosure: I am long FNKO. This is not investment advice. I reserve the right to buy or sell FNKO without updating this thread. Do your own research and share (or not share) with the community in this thread. Thank you to the others on Reddit that shared this idea earlier.
Feedback: If you have any additional information, ideas, or critiques please make sure to comment. It is great to get the perspective of others when making an investment. Also that information can be incorporated into future posts and updates.

TL;DR at the bottom
Hi guys, with the market rallying 20% from its "bottom", many people are expressing the sentiment that we should buy back into the market again because the "fed" or the "government" won't allow stocks to crash.
We will for sure see unprecedented actions taken by the fed and the government because they have both the motive and the political capital to enact such policies. However, I think this is a misguided reason to believe the market is currently making its "real" rally.
I am not not a permabear nor am I a permabull. I just try to objectively analyze the facts, apply a healthy dose of margin of safety, and then see if my conclusions are actionable.
For example, I posted my thesis on why we will enter a serious global economic downturn on Feb 9th 10 days before it happened. At the time we were at the height of the biggest bull market in our history, and I had gotten a lot of attacks on my thesis leading up to me consolidating my thoughts:
https://www.reddit.com/China_Flu/comments/f1fm6y/the_world_economy_will_enter_a_serious_downturn/
I continued adding more thoughts on things like the potential efficacy of Chloroquine 2 weeks before Trump announced it in a press conference and the media picked up on it, the potential collapse of American oil producers before the price war happened, casinos going under, helicopter money, bailouts, etc all before they were announced or the markets priced them in here:
https://www.reddit.com/China_Flu/comments/fede69/continued_thoughts_on_the_global_economic_impact/
And finally I talked about an upcoming inflection point coincidentally moments before Trump first announced Chloroquine/Hydroxychloroquine and 2 trading days before the "bottom" of the market:
https://www.reddit.com/stocks/comments/fleh7e/incoming_inflection_point_for_general_market/
So I'm perfectly happy to make bearish calls or bullish calls, they are dependent variables of independent and unbiased analysis. I hope I made a reasonable case for why I am not personally biased (although, for the sake of humanity, I do wish for progress and prosperity of course).
I think the market rally is largely a mirage, and we are not getting correct pricings. The rally is probably driven by two main sources:

• Capital displacement from monetary action
  
• Incorrect earnings modeling based on improper historic precedent.
  

So the capital displacement is relatively simple: If you're seeking shelter in "risk free" investments that has some yields, you're now competing with a buyer (federal reserve) that prints hundreds of billions up to whatever it wants. They're literally squeezing out capital from the finite treasuries.
If you want riskier high quality corporate bonds, the fed will be there.
If you want even equities, you're going to face competition for them in the future. At least that's what former chairwoman Jenet Yellen recently said about the possibility of expanding their powers to buy equities.
So money is getting squeezed into a smaller and smaller relative portion of the financial markets, and the artificial demand is driving yields down and prices up. I could write a whole thread about this, but let's stick with the explanation of price movement.
The second main reason for the recent rally is from institutional investors who are incorrectly modeling earnings/yield of equities. So the logic here is: trillions are injected into the economy (fiscal injections), those trillions will become earnings for companies at some multiplier of the original stimulus over x amount of time, and if we add this number to the unstimulated estimated earnings, we can model future earnings.
My issue with this model, is on two main assumptions:
The first assumption is the length of disruption caused by the threat of this virus.
This virus is not going to stop its serious disruption of behavior from economic actors. Especially not in a country like the US where the majority of people have a massive financial disincentive to seek out healthcare. Here's my logic:
For months I've been praising the governments and response of South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan. With Taiwan being the absolute best at handling the virus. However, I have also been using them as my leading indicators for how the virus will progress and affect economic actors. What I have seen developing lately is not good.
Singapore is now calling for a shutdown, after they initially did a herculean job of containing their outbreak. I had hoped that they would develop procedures (that we can copy) needed to run an open economy while the threat of the virus looms in the background. But that is not what has happened. Instead, we are seeing growing numbers of new clusters forming, and quickly getting out of control. They are tightening and shutting down their economy rather than opening up more. This is our leading indicator. A government far more responsible and effective than us is resorting to shutting down.
Taiwan is faring better, but only because of their prohibitive ban on almost all foreign travelers (this is obviously devastating to their tourism sector and broader economy). Their economy and society remains open, with many if not most people having hardly any interruptions to their lives (aside from mask wearing). They are one of only 3 countries where all children are still going to school. However, even their economy is faltering as they try to balance the prohibitive actions needed to contain the virus and the economic need to keep things open. They are proposing an unprecedented stimulus/rescue package to bolster their economy. And I think it's a safe assumption that if they ever do open up to foreign travelers again, especially with covid19 having proliferated as it already has, then they will have to deal with massive outbreak clusters all over their island.
South Korea, which has probably the relatable and relevant model for us to copy, has recently extended its social distance campaign. South Korea is a far larger nation than Singapore or Taiwan. They have a climate similar to Seattle/New York. They had a major outbreak in Deagu but didn't shut their country down. They never even banned Chinese travelers, yes, they had Chinese tourists in their country while the outbreak was happening. They were among the first to widely use Hydroxychloroquine/chloroquine as a treatment for Covid19. They had among the lowest fatality rates. They contained their outbreak without shutting the whole country down.
Even South Korea can't truly return to normal and open their economy up.
So why, in our incredible American exceptionalism hubris, and far less competent leaders, do we believe we're going to come anywhere close to normalcy in the near future?
Let's look at the next assumption, that fiscal stimulus would end up as earnings for companies. There's no doubt some will end up as earnings, but only a small fraction of what is being modeled by those on Wall Street.
The average American don't even have $1000 in emergency funds, do we expect them to return to their normal consumption habits when they risk having hospital bills multiples of $1000 just from walking past the wrong person? Do you think Americans, as much as they love to spend, aren't going to put some of that stimulus check in their emergency funds rather than contribute it to the earning of some companies? Sure, there will be some "forced" spending of the money (food and necessities), but if anyone is modeling the multiplier effect from previous data, then they really don't appreciate how different this virus makes things. Even in the GFC, laid off people didn't really worry about the heightened threat of being hospitalized.
Finally, some investors believe the Fed and the government literally will do anything to keep the numbers up. If this is true, you should be buying silver (or gold), not stocks.
Monetary actions can be reversed relatively easily. They are far more dynamic tools. Fiscal actions are not. You put money in the hands of spenders, that money is gonna circulate. And you really don't have an easy way of reversing that. If we think the government is going to keep handing out stimulus checks, grants to businesses, and other fiscal stimulus, then the inflation predicted from the GFC will come true for this crisis.
The fall out of inflation will be difficult to truly understand. But I do think inflation will be disruptive enough to the economy that inflation hedge assets will outperform other assets at least in the short term. For example, if inflation goes to 5%, who's going to lend to companies for less than inflation? With costlier debt, equity yield goes down, and again, what investor wants yields less than inflation? Inflation is going to cause all kinds of disruptions. I think the disruptions will come down to less liquidity (credit will vanish with uncertain inflation) and higher economic friction (less efficiency).
So if the response to why the market has to go up is continuous fiscal (and some monetary) actions to prop up spending and earnings, then the question is how will fiscal actions be reversed? How do we get that money out after things go back to "normal"?
I think if we see equities rise from here, it'll be reflective of inflation rather than inflation-adjusted earnings. Silver would be the play here.
I have a lot more thoughts on this, especially on the time it takes to turn the gears of the financial system and why the inertia is moving us deeper into global recession, not out of it, but I'm running out of time and must end here.
TL;DR this is a fake rally, and if anyone really expects prices to continue rallying, buy silver instead

TL;DR at the bottom
Hi guys, with the market rallying 20% from its "bottom", many people are expressing the sentiment that we should buy back into the market again because the "fed" or the "government" won't allow stocks to crash.
We will for sure see unprecedented actions taken by the fed and the government because they have both the motive and the political capital to enact such policies. However, I think this is a misguided reason to believe the market is currently making its "real" rally.
I am not not a permabear nor am I a permabull. I just try to objectively analyze the facts, apply a healthy dose of margin of safety, and then see if my conclusions are actionable.
For example, I posted my thesis on why we will enter a serious global economic downturn on Feb 9th 10 days before it happened. At the time we were at the height of the biggest bull market in our history, and I had gotten a lot of attacks on my thesis leading up to me consolidating my thoughts:
https://www.reddit.com/China_Flu/comments/f1fm6y/the_world_economy_will_enter_a_serious_downturn/
I continued adding more thoughts on things like the potential efficacy of Chloroquine 2 weeks before Trump announced it in a press conference and the media picked up on it, the potential collapse of American oil producers before the price war happened, casinos going under, helicopter money, bailouts, etc all before they were announced or the markets priced them in here:
https://www.reddit.com/China_Flu/comments/fede69/continued_thoughts_on_the_global_economic_impact/
And finally I talked about an upcoming inflection point coincidentally moments before Trump first announced Chloroquine/Hydroxychloroquine and 2 trading days before the "bottom" of the market:
https://www.reddit.com/stocks/comments/fleh7e/incoming_inflection_point_for_general_market/
So I'm perfectly happy to make bearish calls or bullish calls, they are dependent variables of independent and unbiased analysis. I hope I made a reasonable case for why I am not personally biased (although, for the sake of humanity, I do wish for progress and prosperity of course).
I think the market rally is largely a mirage, and we are not getting correct pricings. The rally is probably driven by two main sources:

• Capital displacement from monetary action
  
• Incorrect earnings modeling based on improper historic precedent.
  

So the capital displacement is relatively simple: If you're seeking shelter in "risk free" investments that has some yields, you're now competing with a buyer (federal reserve) that prints hundreds of billions up to whatever it wants. They're literally squeezing out capital from the finite treasuries.
If you want riskier high quality corporate bonds, the fed will be there.
If you want even equities, you're going to face competition for them in the future. At least that's what former chairwoman Jenet Yellen recently said about the possibility of expanding their powers to buy equities.
So money is getting squeezed into a smaller and smaller relative portion of the financial markets, and the artificial demand is driving yields down and prices up. I could write a whole thread about this, but let's stick with the explanation of price movement.
The second main reason for the recent rally is from institutional investors who are incorrectly modeling earnings/yield of equities. So the logic here is: trillions are injected into the economy (fiscal injections), those trillions will become earnings for companies at some multiplier of the original stimulus over x amount of time, and if we add this number to the unstimulated estimated earnings, we can model future earnings.
My issue with this model, is on two main assumptions:
The first assumption is the length of disruption caused by the threat of this virus.
This virus is not going to stop its serious disruption of behavior from economic actors. Especially not in a country like the US where the majority of people have a massive financial disincentive to seek out healthcare. Here's my logic:
For months I've been praising the governments and response of South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan. With Taiwan being the absolute best at handling the virus. However, I have also been using them as my leading indicators for how the virus will progress and affect economic actors. What I have seen developing lately is not good.
Singapore is now calling for a shutdown, after they initially did a herculean job of containing their outbreak. I had hoped that they would develop procedures (that we can copy) needed to run an open economy while the threat of the virus looms in the background. But that is not what has happened. Instead, we are seeing growing numbers of new clusters forming, and quickly getting out of control. They are tightening and shutting down their economy rather than opening up more. This is our leading indicator. A government far more responsible and effective than us is resorting to shutting down.
Taiwan is faring better, but only because of their prohibitive ban on almost all foreign travelers (this is obviously devastating to their tourism sector and broader economy). Their economy and society remains open, with many if not most people having hardly any interruptions to their lives (aside from mask wearing). They are one of only 3 countries where all children are still going to school. However, even their economy is faltering as they try to balance the prohibitive actions needed to contain the virus and the economic need to keep things open. They are proposing an unprecedented stimulus/rescue package to bolster their economy. And I think it's a safe assumption that if they ever do open up to foreign travelers again, especially with covid19 having proliferated as it already has, then they will have to deal with massive outbreak clusters all over their island.
South Korea, which has probably the relatable and relevant model for us to copy, has recently extended its social distance campaign. South Korea is a far larger nation than Singapore or Taiwan. They have a climate similar to Seattle/New York. They had a major outbreak in Deagu but didn't shut their country down. They never even banned Chinese travelers, yes, they had Chinese tourists in their country while the outbreak was happening. They were among the first to widely use Hydroxychloroquine/chloroquine as a treatment for Covid19. They had among the lowest fatality rates. They contained their outbreak without shutting the whole country down.
Even South Korea can't truly return to normal and open their economy up.
So why, in our incredible American exceptionalism hubris, and far less competent leaders, do we believe we're going to come anywhere close to normalcy in the near future?
Let's look at the next assumption, that fiscal stimulus would end up as earnings for companies. There's no doubt some will end up as earnings, but only a small fraction of what is being modeled by those on Wall Street.
The average American don't even have $1000 in emergency funds, do we expect them to return to their normal consumption habits when they risk having hospital bills multiples of $1000 just from walking past the wrong person? Do you think Americans, as much as they love to spend, aren't going to put some of that stimulus check in their emergency funds rather than contribute it to the earning of some companies? Sure, there will be some "forced" spending of the money (food and necessities), but if anyone is modeling the multiplier effect from previous data, then they really don't appreciate how different this virus makes things. Even in the GFC, laid off people didn't really worry about the heightened threat of being hospitalized.
Finally, some investors believe the Fed and the government literally will do anything to keep the numbers up. If this is true, you should be buying silver (or gold), not stocks.
Monetary actions can be reversed relatively easily. They are far more dynamic tools. Fiscal actions are not. You put money in the hands of spenders, that money is gonna circulate. And you really don't have an easy way of reversing that. If we think the government is going to keep handing out stimulus checks, grants to businesses, and other fiscal stimulus, then the inflation predicted from the GFC will come true for this crisis.
The fall out of inflation will be difficult to truly understand. But I do think inflation will be disruptive enough to the economy that inflation hedge assets will outperform other assets at least in the short term. For example, if inflation goes to 5%, who's going to lend to companies for less than inflation? With costlier debt, equity yield goes down, and again, what investor wants yields less than inflation? Inflation is going to cause all kinds of disruptions. I think the disruptions will come down to less liquidity (credit will vanish with uncertain inflation) and higher economic friction (less efficiency).
So if the response to why the market has to go up is continuous fiscal (and some monetary) actions to prop up spending and earnings, then the question is how will fiscal actions be reversed? How do we get that money out after things go back to "normal"?
I think if we see equities rise from here, it'll be reflective of inflation rather than inflation-adjusted earnings. Silver would be the play here.
I have a lot more thoughts on this, especially on the time it takes to turn the gears of the financial system and why the inertia is moving us deeper into global recession, not out of it, but I'm running out of time and must end here.
TL;DR this is a fake rally, and if anyone really expects prices to continue rallying, buy silver instead

This list will consist of the beginnings of an outstanding open-world racing game from many of the features I've conceptualized. I've always had a thought/fantasy in my head of taking some of the best features from many racing games and rolling them into one fantastic game. There have been so many quirks and great things across many racing games and even non-racing games that could be implemented into other racing games to improve upon games. I think some game developers and creative directors owe it to themselves to play many other racing games themselves to draw inspiration from other games and they should directly use polls in social media to see what people want the most, so resources can be allocated in that direction. I will refer to many games throughout this as I feel a lot of racing games (and other games in general) made over the last 15 years or so have features that could contribute to the concepts that would create a great game. Game abbreviations will include MC (Midnight Club), NFS (Need for Speed), TC (The Crew) FH (Forza Horizon), FM (Forza Motorsport), GT (Gran Turismo), GTA (Grand Theft Auto) and TDU (Test Drive Unlimited). This list will not be suggesting any locations, vehicle or part manufacturers directly unless something is used as an example, this is just features that could be incorporated upon a base game. Developers will obtain whatever licenses they can and I don't see this as a thing to extensively cover. An example is that we would all love to see Toyota, but obtaining their license recently has been difficult for many companies. One thing that I can't speak of as I have no personal use, is steering wheels. I'd like to hear some feedback on how to create the optimal steering wheel experience in a racing game.
Physics: Driving physics control the entire driving experience of a racing game so these are ultimately the most important thing to get correct. There have been many games that have gotten so many things right with a mediocre or worse physics system that detracted from the experience so much that the legacy of the games it applies to are tarnished regardless of how many other things are done well, with TDU2 is a great example. Ideally, they would be on par with FH4. Some extent of arcade physics would be nice, but not to the extent of some of the Ghost produced NFS games to where there is some oddly conflicting attempt of two physics systems fighting each other to determine if you are attempting to drift or grip. There would be a difference in the feeling of drivetrains and the AWD wouldn't be dominant over RWD in paved road scenarios, tuning and efficient driving could make RWD better due to the car being lighter.
Controller mappings/settings: I will continue to reiterate the ability to customize things to the user's liking should be the biggest priority in many categories. The ability to enable and disable vibration in the handles and triggers individually would be nice. It's good to have the choice setting of linearity and inner and outer dead zones. I will be using an Xbox controller for my ideal pre mapped settings. I think FH4 has the best control scheme, but could still use some improvement (and features). To maximize the inputs available, the photo mode should be accessed through the start/pause menu, rather than having them mapped to buttons that could be useful for other functions. The standard LT brake, RT accelerate, LS steering and RS camera (with the click of it being a 180 degree look back) are a very simple base scheme. LB to use the clutch, X and B should be downshift and upshift respectable, RB for the handbrake, A for nitrous, Y for rewind, LS click for the horn, the "select" button would be for interact/map when there's nothing to interact with, left d-pad would function the same way GTA5's would regarding the radio (including holding it + RS to select a specific station), down d-pad would function as FH4 does, where you can choose telemetry or a gps assistant, up d-pad could enlarge and extend the mini-map to give an idea of what is ahead. right d pad could pull up a list of mini functions, such as blinkers, headlights, windows, convertible roof, neon lighting, engine off, hydraulics, air bags, cruise control, etc.
Map/Environment: The map can be a real place or a fictional place. Being able to visit a real place from the comfort of your home is nice, but visiting a fantasy land with no creative restrictions would be nice. Some really cool things that were imagined could happen because there is no need to resemble a real place. Day/night cycle with a weather cycle depending on which part of the map you are on, where snow can be on top of mountains. The map needs to be large, no smaller than FH4, ideally larger than the individual TDU2 maps with little to no exploration restrictions. I'd like to see a couple very long straightaways or near straightaways to allow cars to top out on speed. This could be combined with a highway loop system that can wrap around a large portion of the map. Beaches, bumpy terrain areas for intense offroading and of course tunnels for the sound of engines roaring through and echoing. A moderately large mountain would be cool for a hill climb and maybe somewhere to descend from the mountain with multiple consecutive hairpins from the mountain would be nice for drifting. I’d love for the map to have spots to evoke nostalgia for many of us that have played many racing games throughout the year, with an example being when I played TC1 for the first time and I was in LA, it brought back fond memories of MCLA. Even some areas do not have to be specific, but some areas on TC2 reminded me of the speed challenges on NFSPS. Having a/a few tuning shops across the map would be really cool, along with a few NPC cars completely RNG based on model and visual customization so that every time you visit the tuners, you see something new so the tuner feels less stale over time. Barn finds/TDU2 style wrecks. Having racing tracks incorporated into the map that are accessible while in free roam and used for races would be cool, like TC1/TC2, especially an oval track with an optional infield layout. Having a parking garage or two would be nice as you can do many things with them. I liked how there was one incorporated in MCLA and NMFSMW(2012) provided a good experience while in them. We should have a GTA5 style 48 minute irl day/night cycle with about 10 hours in game (20 minutes irl) of nighttime and 14 hours in game (28 minutes irl) of daytime to provide a balance most would find enjoyable. While viewing the full sized map in the menu, we should be able to zoom out a lot or zoom in to nearly street view, like TC2. Roads need to have believable lane width, unlike how the lanes have become wider and wider every FH installment. We should have some back roads that are very slim and have room to accommodate one car width covering both directions. Gas/petrol stations are nice to see as that is something that some games don't include enough. The planes flying in TC2 add to the immersiveness. Having an airport with a long airstrip is something that is seen as important. It was a place for people to frequently congregate in GTA4/FH2 and the lack of a nice, unobstructed airstrip in FH4 is seen as something that's a letdown. Real life traffic cars with several color options each to increase immersiveness, also cars represent surroundings (taxis in the city, utility vehicles in a rural area, etc). Having pedestrians on foot can also add into the immersive feeling, including them reacting to your presence by having dialogue and running away if you're being reckless. Some places will be in various stages of construction (similar to GTA) and over the course of updates they'll come further along and finish construction and some will become interactive spaces. Some places will also become the sights of demolition.
Camera settings: Getting the right view and feel for cameras is important to giving you the most comfortable experience to get the feel for where your car is at and focus on surroundings in the way that is desired. Importantly, having bumper, hood, cockpit (with and without steering wheel) and chase cameras is a great start. There should also be an "action" camera with additional sense of speed, sensitivity towards turns, etc. Although this isn't a racing game, Rocket League inspired me to take a deeper dive into the thoughts of camera perspectives. Adjusting RL camera settings can assist your ability to be aware of surroundings and I'm sure the same would apply to actual racing games. Settings for RL that would be nice to apply to racing games would be the ability to turn on or off camera shake upon collisions, the FOV, distance of the camera away from the car (and distance gain relative to speed, if desired), camera height in relativity to the vehicle (could be important with SUVs/trucks) and angle at which the camera points towards the ground/sky. I'd like to see settings to turn vignetting and motion blur from a 0-100% scale. This effect is often used to create a sense of speed, but is often found to be disruptive towards viewing surroundings and braking zones. As I feel this would pertain to the player's perception/camera adjustment, I think the cockpit views should contain an adjustable seat, such as TDU1. Keeping something like the drift camera for cockpit views, along with the settings they have related to it in FH4 would be nice.
User interface/HUD: I think being consistent to many other racing games would be good in many ways. Ideally, the ability to adjust which corner things are in would be the best, but if the customization wasn't an option, this is how I think it should be. Having the speedometetachometeodometer in the bottom right would be nice, along with the ability to display it in an analog or digital format, such as FH4. The map should be on the bottom left and should have two levels of details for options; one being a minimalist design with no border that gradually fades out (similar to Grid Autosport's track layout minimap, mixed with the off road icon detail of FH4). The second map option should be similar to a mixture of NFS Heat and TDU1 in terms of borders on the mini-map and detail to show side roads/terrains. The ability to adjust the map rotating or not would be nice. We should also be able to see our recent driving path in a thin line on the map, such as TDU2. The race position should be in the top right and all other race details (total time in race and sprint race % or lap count, best and previous lap) should be in the top left. Another thing that could add into the immersion would be changing the opacity of the HUD, from 0-100% so you could make it mostly transparent, but visible enough to be useful if that is what is desired. Having an odometer built into the HUD would be nice as well. Games such as TC2 have the speedometer and mini-map flipped from the standard positions and it is a minor grievance. The speedometers in non-cockpit views should be able to resemble the car's actual speedometer as seen in TDU and NFS Shift. We should be able to filter the map well when in that menu, similar to FH4.
Event Types: Blueprints (FH3), random events where you can taxi or tail someone (TDU2), Drag races with proper street light, track light or an NPC human signaling in the middle of the road making the countdown (also with burnouts like NFSPS), score based drift racing, sprint races, circuit races, speed trap races (NFSMW), pink slip and money wager races (MCLA), unordered races (MC3), rivals (FH3/4), true street races and official sanctioned races (FH3/4 and NFSH) and end the game with a goliath type of race (FH3/4). Off road racing in the form of sprints and circuits would be nice. Bringing over speed traps, speed zones, drift zones and danger signs/long jumps from FH4/NFSH would be nice. Removing the potential disruption of traffic would be nice by ghosting vehicles in these situations, as FH4 has done. A route creator along the lines of MCLA/FH4 would be nice with the ability to add/remove some objects like barriers and ramps. The TDU2 style limited time events would be cool. Maybe a certain event would be worth double money or level progression. Some of the limited time races would utilize the places being constructed and demolished.
Online Play: Free roam such as TC2/FH4 in terms of grouping with friends is ideal, but have the option to have private lobbies (up to as many players as the developers can make work) and the ability to search for public free roam lobbies based on preferences of drifting, car meets, cruising, etc. Free roamers should be able to disable or enable collisions with random players not in their group. Lacking the collisions removes some of the immersiveness and the ghosted appearance ruins things such as drifting tandems and trains with random players. Something similar to Forzathon from FH4 could help players unite and group together and optionally have something to do in the lobby every hour. Ranked and unranked playlist organization like FH4, but make completely separate on and off road playlists for online along with a voting system for the class of racing and location. Online race collision penalties and ghosting similar to FH4. Free roam quick 1v1 wager races against other players in cruises. We should have the option to play through the campaign in a cooperative fashion, similar to FH4/TC2. Cross play would be nice to implement.
Driving Features: Race Driver Grid style rewinds as they're probably the smoothest working rewinds compared to the segmented rewind system in other racing titles. TC2 back on track compared to FH4 weird reset, FRIM (TDU2)/skill chain (FH1-4) in freemode to reward in small XP/money. The ability to enable settings on a 0-100% slider would be nice as well as a detailed damage model. The ability to render in more tire smoke than other games would be nice. I'm aware it requires a lot of system resources, but I would like to see how far it could be pushed on next generation consoles/and always-improving top of the line PCs. Using the car with manual transmission would allow us to put the car in neutral. Some vehicles with visible engines/engine components have a noticeable shake while idle, so seeing that would be nice. Being able to enable/disable fuel management (both for cruising/racing) would be nice, along with gas/petrol stations to refill the fuel and nitrous (just a drive-thru required). Slipstreaming other cars will make your car faster, not give nitrous like NFS. Nitrous should slowly regenerate like NFSMW2005, where there is also a slight delay for it to begin regenerating again, unlike TC2 where it begins regenerating immediately. Difficulty settings to lower driving assistance, if desired. Wipers operating along with rain buildup would clearly add some realism. Reversing your car would add a backup camera in place of the infotainment system displaying the map until you've left the reverse gear. While driving in the cockpit, the wheel needs to be given a 900ish degree rotation from lock to lock to add into the realistic feeling of being in a car.
Non-Driving Features: Players should be able to enter their homes similar to GTA5 and TDU2 and they should be able to have a vast array of customization for their house and a trophy room, which can be earned from high tier sanctioned races/tournaments (inspired by NFL 2K5/Auto Modellista), photos taken in game can be framed and displayed around the house (TDU2) and multiple garages and garage types like TDU/GTA along with the ability to interact with and move cars around different garages and spaces within the garages. The ability to test drive any car at any level of progression and visit themed new dealerships and used dealerships would be cool (TDU/TC). Character customization would be nice to control the appearance of your character, such as a plastic surgeon and clothing stores. The ability to control blinkers, headlights, windows, convertible tops/sunroofs, neon lighting, turning the engine off, operating hydraulics and adjusting air bags. Having a large variety of standard and gimmick horns. Using horns to control police lights to flash rapidly upon the horn being pressed, along with the siren remaining operating upon letting go of the horn. The internal navigation/infotainment screens of cars show the in game map/gps (TDU2). We could see the drone from FH4 return as it’s a good way to view tricky areas and get a live view of other players without obstructing them. Wheelspins (FH4) exist, but guarantee car or money and have the potential of earning clothes as a side bonus. We could maybe have a casino (similar to TDU2/GTA5) with various attractions, such as slots, a daily wheelspin for a rotating car weekly, the ability to bet on real life PvP races that the large room would randomly put you into spectate and other casino based activities. Our character shouldn't be mute throughout the story, we should be given a few voice choices for a little more personality for our character (similar to how Saints Row operates its voices). Car clubs would be cool, similar to FH3, along with leaderboards based on the clubs. Oil changes at the performance shops and car washes would be nice. Garages/dealerships and tuning shops will have various ambient noises (hydraulic lifts, airsaws, torches, metal slamming, etc.) and subtle music.
Photo mode: This deserves its own category and also can help a company market the game by users sharing their photos if the mode allows such great photos people will be prone to sharing them. We should have a filtetime of day/weather system like TC2. The focusing and motion blur of FH4 is well executed. We should be able to zoom in and out (adjust focal length) without it altering our field of view. We should be able to apply different lens effects, such as fisheye, rectilinear, etc. The camera should have the ability to position freely, in terms of raise, lower, tilt, rotate, etc. The maximum height for the camera needs to be much higher than FH4. The camera should have the potential to be on a gimbal, so it can remain even while a car is going up and down a hill to emphasize how drastic the ascent or descent is. All these features on top of standard stuff such as exposure, saturation, etc. Also, the live rewind and fast forward again option in TC2 is amazing. It’s easy to miss that perfect single frame shot on other games, but the ability to do that solves it.
Soundtrack: It needs to be eclectic with hip-hop, rock and electronic (maybe 2 of each) like modern and classic hip-hop and rock and electronic can be split between chill and hype. Maybe we can get pop, country and classical stations? Have a mix of some lesser known songs and also some billboard topping hits. Don't have stations where many of their songs sound very similar. Something great that could be added could be Spotify integration if any company can figure it out/contract Spotify. Groove integration was a good idea on FH, but Groove wasn't successful. Having the ability to fully mute all music sounds would also be nice (unlike FH4).
Vehicles: As I said, I will not be going over brands, but I would like to see a variety of entry level cars, sports cars, super cars, hyper cars and full on race cars. Concept cars would be great, as they are seen in limited fashion on most open world titles. I'd like trucks and SUVs as well for off roading and to maintain a wide variety of vehicles on par with FH4. I’d also like to see a vehicle categorization similar to FH4 (i.e. Hypercars, classic muscle, etc.). While I'd like to see a variety of vehicle types, I'd still prefer to see quality over quantity. Each vehicle needs to be replicated well and many should have extensive customization. We should be able to favorite cars and also choose a random car (totally random or random from favorites for whatever vehicles are applicable to the given event or freeroam. We should be able to tag vehicles as designed for off-road, wet driving, drifting, drag, etc. These will just be two examples, but we should be able to provide donor cars to speciality shops and convert them into improved, rarer editions. Two conversions that I'll reference would be converting a Porsche Carrera GT into a Gemballa Mirage GT or a Mustang GT into a Saleen S302. A growing variety of vehicles over the course of time, similar to FH4 and TC2.
Visual Customization: No visual adjustments will relate to performance gains or losses (i.e. camber, wheel swaps/sizes, bodykits, etc.) other than you will need to equip some form of spoilewing to adjust rear downforce. We should be able to set wheels smaller than stock, as well as larger. Track width should be an option with multiple sliders (like NFS2015). We should be given manufacturer options for paint, wheels and interior choices, etc. (TDU2/TC2). We should be able to save paint colors (MCLA), instead of just having them in recents and eventually disappear (FH). We should be able to adjust trim as chrome, titanium, gold, black, etc. (MC3) The paint options of NFS Heat and MCLA would be nice, such as gloss, metallic flake with size options, carbon fiber varieties, chrome, matte, satin, fading from left to right as well as top to bottom and the ability to add multiple colors in a color shifting paint job (MC3), colored nitrous (MC3/NFSH), colored tire smoke (GTA5/NFSH) and backfire (NFSH), tire design (MCLA/NFSH), wide body kits (both from manufacturers and developer designed), bumpers, spoilers/wings, skirts, mirrors and fenders (non real life brands can autosculpt like NFSC). Neon colors designs and patterns (TC2/NFSH), hydraulics (MCLA) and airbags (MCLA/NFSH) Brake calipers should be able to be from brands (MCLA/NFSH) or painted (TC2). Interior parts such as steering wheels and seats (MCLA), along with materials, alcantara, suede, leather, plastic, carbon fiber, chrome, etc. (TC2). We should be able to chop the roofs of some vehicles (MC3). Cars have individual licence plates and can get multiple states/countries given they fit the spacing allocated on each vehicle for them (MCLA) Tinted headlight and taillight housings are great options along with light bulb temperatures. Although it isn’t the taste of many people, we should be able to do all kinds of unique styles, such as monster truck (or at least an extreme lift), donk, bosozoku and even NHRA style drag body modifications (with optional wheelie bar) for some of the vehicles you would see them on in real life, but modifications this drastic will impact performance and vehicle hit box/collision physics. Vinyls on widows should be a thing with the ability to make vinyls able to utilize different paint materials (NFSH). FH4 has the numerical system to mirror and scale things fairly well. I’d like to keep the placement system of FH4. Also, the FH4 marketplace to download tunes and designs is the best I've seen, so that can be duplicated. As this will blanket all of the above, some customization parts should be recommended by a popular magazine or website. MC3 did this with Dub and created a fantastic game with a lasting legacy and many of the style options were relevant when the game was released and for a while after. We should be able to adjust tire width and profile, similar to MCLA. The ability to paint engine bays and accent parts would be nice, similar to NFS UG2. Custom exhaust tips/mufflers would be something nice that many other games have incorporated.
Performance Customization and Tuning: PI system like Forza with classes (but actively tuned for balance), different turbos for rpm ranges/turbo lag, supercharger. We should have different tire compounds, even being able to set for front/rear separately. As mentioned earlier, a RWD car that is tuned well and driven well should have the potential to beat an AWD vehicle due to it being lighter. Keeping the tuning settings of what you can adjust would be ideal. We should have the ability to combine the live tuning of NFSH, but enhance it while at a test track (with an off road area in the middle) connected to the tuning shop. You can isolate many tuning options and slide them around while hot lapping. I’d like the ability to run fat rear drag tires, unlike FH4 where it’s just a tire compound.
Audio: This is something that will be very important to many, so great sounds like the noise of turbos on NFS2015 and raw engine noises of FH2 and other games held to a high standard will be important to nail. Exhaust tuning from NFSH was nice, but I would like to see a little more of a difference in the sound with this idea further improved. Getting the proper transmission noises can be useful for cars on top of just the engine noise. Tires skidding is nice noise to get correct for realism as well. Having nice ambient sounds will also be important for immersiveness, such as birds chirping, waves washing up on the beach, wind noises and great echo sounds for traveling through tunnels or densely surrounded areas, such as down a row of highrise buildings). Other than making a car sound how it sounds and making realistic sounds for the environment, there is not much more to be said. It's a moderately limited description, but still something that is pivotal.
Story/post launch content: I would like to see a sense of progression built up throughout the game by starting in a low end car as someone who freshly arrived in the are the map takes place in (MCLA), maybe the antagonist could be someone who scammed you in a previous city or dismissed your talent at the beginning of the game. For me, the outright story isn't too important, but can contribute to how much you will enjoy a racing game. Any DLC map expansion needs to be seamless and not require a separate load in, similar to Burnout Paradise Big Surf Island bridge or (MCLA South Central expansion) and unlike FH4 Fortune Island. The 1000 Club was a great thing that occurred on FH1 that would be nice to bring reason to use every car and for the 100%ers to have something else to chase. Police are something that hasn't been done extremely well in a racing only game in a very long time, in my opinion. I would ideally focus on everything else before attempting to add police in. If they were added in, something along the lines of NFSMW (2005) would be nice, but with higher stakes. We should have an end-game hero car, similar to the M3 GTR from NFSMW, but make it a car that isn't already iconic from another game, movie or real life racing, as people wouldn't think of the hero car associated to this hypothetical game, but related to whatever it was previously iconic in, as whatever work that went into making it that car would go to waste as people would want to overwrite that design. Alongside the hero car, we should also have a couple cars that are unique variations of pre-existing cars (Dub Edition cars of MCLA) for other special events (MCLA hard tournaments/FH3 street race bosses). The post-launch support needs to be good, unlike NFSH. Adding cars monthly would be a great start, along with any necessary QoL updates.
Sorry for any formatting or grammatical issues. I’d like to hear any additional features to add into racing games from the feedback of other people or changes that they would prefer. Also, if there are any ideas in here that others would like to emphasize. Any of this content is free for content creators to recycle if that is desired. I’d like to see some of these ideas be passed around and heard to developers on what could be improved upon. Many games have great ideas and I’d like to see them build off of each other’s greatness.

This list will consist of the beginnings of an outstanding open-world racing game from many of the features I've conceptualized. I've always had a thought/fantasy in my head of taking some of the best features from many racing games and rolling them into one fantastic game. There have been so many quirks and great things across many racing games and even non-racing games that could be implemented into other racing games to improve upon games. I think some game developers and creative directors owe it to themselves to play many other racing games themselves to draw inspiration from other games and they should directly use polls in social media to see what people want the most, so resources can be allocated in that direction. I will refer to many games throughout this as I feel a lot of racing games (and other games in general) made over the last 15 years or so have features that could contribute to the concepts that would create a great game. Game abbreviations will include MC (Midnight Club), NFS (Need for Speed), TC (The Crew) FH (Forza Horizon), FM (Forza Motorsport), GT (Gran Turismo), GTA (Grand Theft Auto) and TDU (Test Drive Unlimited). This list will not be suggesting any locations, vehicle or part manufacturers directly unless something is used as an example, this is just features that could be incorporated upon a base game. Developers will obtain whatever licenses they can and I don't see this as a thing to extensively cover. An example is that we would all love to see Toyota, but obtaining their license recently has been difficult for many companies. One thing that I can't speak of as I have no personal use, is steering wheels. I'd like to hear some feedback on how to create the optimal steering wheel experience in a racing game.
Physics: Driving physics control the entire driving experience of a racing game so these are ultimately the most important thing to get correct. There have been many games that have gotten so many things right with a mediocre or worse physics system that detracted from the experience so much that the legacy of the games it applies to are tarnished regardless of how many other things are done well, with TDU2 is a great example. Ideally, they would be on par with FH4. Some extent of arcade physics would be nice, but not to the extent of some of the Ghost produced NFS games to where there is some oddly conflicting attempt of two physics systems fighting each other to determine if you are attempting to drift or grip. There would be a difference in the feeling of drivetrains and the AWD wouldn't be dominant over RWD in paved road scenarios, tuning and efficient driving could make RWD better due to the car being lighter.
Controller mappings/settings: I will continue to reiterate the ability to customize things to the user's liking should be the biggest priority in many categories. The ability to enable and disable vibration in the handles and triggers individually would be nice. It's good to have the choice setting of linearity and inner and outer dead zones. I will be using an Xbox controller for my ideal pre mapped settings. I think FH4 has the best control scheme, but could still use some improvement (and features). To maximize the inputs available, the photo mode should be accessed through the start/pause menu, rather than having them mapped to buttons that could be useful for other functions. The standard LT brake, RT accelerate, LS steering and RS camera (with the click of it being a 180 degree look back) are a very simple base scheme. LB to use the clutch, X and B should be downshift and upshift respectable, RB for the handbrake, A for nitrous, Y for rewind, LS click for the horn, the "select" button would be for interact/map when there's nothing to interact with, left d-pad would function the same way GTA5's would regarding the radio (including holding it + RS to select a specific station), down d-pad would function as FH4 does, where you can choose telemetry or a gps assistant, up d-pad could enlarge and extend the mini-map to give an idea of what is ahead. right d pad could pull up a list of mini functions, such as blinkers, headlights, windows, convertible roof, neon lighting, engine off, hydraulics, air bags, cruise control, etc.
Map/Environment: The map can be a real place or a fictional place. Being able to visit a real place from the comfort of your home is nice, but visiting a fantasy land with no creative restrictions would be nice. Some really cool things that were imagined could happen because there is no need to resemble a real place. Day/night cycle with a weather cycle depending on which part of the map you are on, where snow can be on top of mountains. The map needs to be large, no smaller than FH4, ideally larger than the individual TDU2 maps with little to no exploration restrictions. I'd like to see a couple very long straightaways or near straightaways to allow cars to top out on speed. This could be combined with a highway loop system that can wrap around a large portion of the map. Beaches, bumpy terrain areas for intense offroading and of course tunnels for the sound of engines roaring through and echoing. A moderately large mountain would be cool for a hill climb and maybe somewhere to descend from the mountain with multiple consecutive hairpins from the mountain would be nice for drifting. I’d love for the map to have spots to evoke nostalgia for many of us that have played many racing games throughout the year, with an example being when I played TC1 for the first time and I was in LA, it brought back fond memories of MCLA. Even some areas do not have to be specific, but some areas on TC2 reminded me of the speed challenges on NFSPS. Having a/a few tuning shops across the map would be really cool, along with a few NPC cars completely RNG based on model and visual customization so that every time you visit the tuners, you see something new so the tuner feels less stale over time. Barn finds/TDU2 style wrecks. Having racing tracks incorporated into the map that are accessible while in free roam and used for races would be cool, like TC1/TC2, especially an oval track with an optional infield layout. Having a parking garage or two would be nice as you can do many things with them. I liked how there was one incorporated in MCLA and NMFSMW(2012) provided a good experience while in them. We should have a GTA5 style 48 minute irl day/night cycle with about 10 hours in game (20 minutes irl) of nighttime and 14 hours in game (28 minutes irl) of daytime to provide a balance most would find enjoyable. While viewing the full sized map in the menu, we should be able to zoom out a lot or zoom in to nearly street view, like TC2. Roads need to have believable lane width, unlike how the lanes have become wider and wider every FH installment. We should have some back roads that are very slim and have room to accommodate one car width covering both directions. Gas/petrol stations are nice to see as that is something that some games don't include enough. The planes flying in TC2 add to the immersiveness. Having an airport with a long airstrip is something that is seen as important. It was a place for people to frequently congregate in GTA4/FH2 and the lack of a nice, unobstructed airstrip in FH4 is seen as something that's a letdown. Real life traffic cars with several color options each to increase immersiveness, also cars represent surroundings (taxis in the city, utility vehicles in a rural area, etc). Having pedestrians on foot can also add into the immersive feeling, including them reacting to your presence by having dialogue and running away if you're being reckless. Some places will be in various stages of construction (similar to GTA) and over the course of updates they'll come further along and finish construction and some will become interactive spaces. Some places will also become the sights of demolition.
Camera settings: Getting the right view and feel for cameras is important to giving you the most comfortable experience to get the feel for where your car is at and focus on surroundings in the way that is desired. Importantly, having bumper, hood, cockpit (with and without steering wheel) and chase cameras is a great start. There should also be an "action" camera with additional sense of speed, sensitivity towards turns, etc. Although this isn't a racing game, Rocket League inspired me to take a deeper dive into the thoughts of camera perspectives. Adjusting RL camera settings can assist your ability to be aware of surroundings and I'm sure the same would apply to actual racing games. Settings for RL that would be nice to apply to racing games would be the ability to turn on or off camera shake upon collisions, the FOV, distance of the camera away from the car (and distance gain relative to speed, if desired), camera height in relativity to the vehicle (could be important with SUVs/trucks) and angle at which the camera points towards the ground/sky. I'd like to see settings to turn vignetting and motion blur from a 0-100% scale. This effect is often used to create a sense of speed, but is often found to be disruptive towards viewing surroundings and braking zones. As I feel this would pertain to the player's perception/camera adjustment, I think the cockpit views should contain an adjustable seat, such as TDU1. Keeping something like the drift camera for cockpit views, along with the settings they have related to it in FH4 would be nice.
User interface/HUD: I think being consistent to many other racing games would be good in many ways. Ideally, the ability to adjust which corner things are in would be the best, but if the customization wasn't an option, this is how I think it should be. Having the speedometetachometeodometer in the bottom right would be nice, along with the ability to display it in an analog or digital format, such as FH4. The map should be on the bottom left and should have two levels of details for options; one being a minimalist design with no border that gradually fades out (similar to Grid Autosport's track layout minimap, mixed with the off road icon detail of FH4). The second map option should be similar to a mixture of NFS Heat and TDU1 in terms of borders on the mini-map and detail to show side roads/terrains. The ability to adjust the map rotating or not would be nice. We should also be able to see our recent driving path in a thin line on the map, such as TDU2. The race position should be in the top right and all other race details (total time in race and sprint race % or lap count, best and previous lap) should be in the top left. Another thing that could add into the immersion would be changing the opacity of the HUD, from 0-100% so you could make it mostly transparent, but visible enough to be useful if that is what is desired. Having an odometer built into the HUD would be nice as well. Games such as TC2 have the speedometer and mini-map flipped from the standard positions and it is a minor grievance. The speedometers in non-cockpit views should be able to resemble the car's actual speedometer as seen in TDU and NFS Shift. We should be able to filter the map well when in that menu, similar to FH4.
Event Types: Blueprints (FH3), random events where you can taxi or tail someone (TDU2), Drag races with proper street light, track light or an NPC human signaling in the middle of the road making the countdown (also with burnouts like NFSPS), score based drift racing, sprint races, circuit races, speed trap races (NFSMW), pink slip and money wager races (MCLA), unordered races (MC3), rivals (FH3/4), true street races and official sanctioned races (FH3/4 and NFSH) and end the game with a goliath type of race (FH3/4). Off road racing in the form of sprints and circuits would be nice. Bringing over speed traps, speed zones, drift zones and danger signs/long jumps from FH4/NFSH would be nice. Removing the potential disruption of traffic would be nice by ghosting vehicles in these situations, as FH4 has done. A route creator along the lines of MCLA/FH4 would be nice with the ability to add/remove some objects like barriers and ramps. The TDU2 style limited time events would be cool. Maybe a certain event would be worth double money or level progression. Some of the limited time races would utilize the places being constructed and demolished.
Online Play: Free roam such as TC2/FH4 in terms of grouping with friends is ideal, but have the option to have private lobbies (up to as many players as the developers can make work) and the ability to search for public free roam lobbies based on preferences of drifting, car meets, cruising, etc. Free roamers should be able to disable or enable collisions with random players not in their group. Lacking the collisions removes some of the immersiveness and the ghosted appearance ruins things such as drifting tandems and trains with random players. Something similar to Forzathon from FH4 could help players unite and group together and optionally have something to do in the lobby every hour. Ranked and unranked playlist organization like FH4, but make completely separate on and off road playlists for online along with a voting system for the class of racing and location. Online race collision penalties and ghosting similar to FH4. Free roam quick 1v1 wager races against other players in cruises. We should have the option to play through the campaign in a cooperative fashion, similar to FH4/TC2. Cross play would be nice to implement.
Driving Features: Race Driver Grid style rewinds as they're probably the smoothest working rewinds compared to the segmented rewind system in other racing titles. TC2 back on track compared to FH4 weird reset, FRIM (TDU2)/skill chain (FH1-4) in freemode to reward in small XP/money. The ability to enable settings on a 0-100% slider would be nice as well as a detailed damage model. The ability to render in more tire smoke than other games would be nice. I'm aware it requires a lot of system resources, but I would like to see how far it could be pushed on next generation consoles/and always-improving top of the line PCs. Using the car with manual transmission would allow us to put the car in neutral. Some vehicles with visible engines/engine components have a noticeable shake while idle, so seeing that would be nice. Being able to enable/disable fuel management (both for cruising/racing) would be nice, along with gas/petrol stations to refill the fuel and nitrous (just a drive-thru required). Slipstreaming other cars will make your car faster, not give nitrous like NFS. Nitrous should slowly regenerate like NFSMW2005, where there is also a slight delay for it to begin regenerating again, unlike TC2 where it begins regenerating immediately. Difficulty settings to lower driving assistance, if desired. Wipers operating along with rain buildup would clearly add some realism. Reversing your car would add a backup camera in place of the infotainment system displaying the map until you've left the reverse gear. While driving in the cockpit, the wheel needs to be given a 900ish degree rotation from lock to lock to add into the realistic feeling of being in a car.
Non-Driving Features: Players should be able to enter their homes similar to GTA5 and TDU2 and they should be able to have a vast array of customization for their house and a trophy room, which can be earned from high tier sanctioned races/tournaments (inspired by NFL 2K5/Auto Modellista), photos taken in game can be framed and displayed around the house (TDU2) and multiple garages and garage types like TDU/GTA along with the ability to interact with and move cars around different garages and spaces within the garages. The ability to test drive any car at any level of progression and visit themed new dealerships and used dealerships would be cool (TDU/TC). Character customization would be nice to control the appearance of your character, such as a plastic surgeon and clothing stores. The ability to control blinkers, headlights, windows, convertible tops/sunroofs, neon lighting, turning the engine off, operating hydraulics and adjusting air bags. Having a large variety of standard and gimmick horns. Using horns to control police lights to flash rapidly upon the horn being pressed, along with the siren remaining operating upon letting go of the horn. The internal navigation/infotainment screens of cars show the in game map/gps (TDU2). We could see the drone from FH4 return as it’s a good way to view tricky areas and get a live view of other players without obstructing them. Wheelspins (FH4) exist, but guarantee car or money and have the potential of earning clothes as a side bonus. We could maybe have a casino (similar to TDU2/GTA5) with various attractions, such as slots, a daily wheelspin for a rotating car weekly, the ability to bet on real life PvP races that the large room would randomly put you into spectate and other casino based activities. Our character shouldn't be mute throughout the story, we should be given a few voice choices for a little more personality for our character (similar to how Saints Row operates its voices). Car clubs would be cool, similar to FH3, along with leaderboards based on the clubs. Oil changes at the performance shops and car washes would be nice. Garages/dealerships and tuning shops will have various ambient noises (hydraulic lifts, airsaws, torches, metal slamming, etc.) and subtle music.
Photo mode: This deserves its own category and also can help a company market the game by users sharing their photos if the mode allows such great photos people will be prone to sharing them. We should have a filtetime of day/weather system like TC2. The focusing and motion blur of FH4 is well executed. We should be able to zoom in and out (adjust focal length) without it altering our field of view. We should be able to apply different lens effects, such as fisheye, rectilinear, etc. The camera should have the ability to position freely, in terms of raise, lower, tilt, rotate, etc. The maximum height for the camera needs to be much higher than FH4. The camera should have the potential to be on a gimbal, so it can remain even while a car is going up and down a hill to emphasize how drastic the ascent or descent is. All these features on top of standard stuff such as exposure, saturation, etc. Also, the live rewind and fast forward again option in TC2 is amazing. It’s easy to miss that perfect single frame shot on other games, but the ability to do that solves it.
Soundtrack: It needs to be eclectic with hip-hop, rock and electronic (maybe 2 of each) like modern and classic hip-hop and rock and electronic can be split between chill and hype. Maybe we can get pop, country and classical stations? Have a mix of some lesser known songs and also some billboard topping hits. Don't have stations where many of their songs sound very similar. Something great that could be added could be Spotify integration if any company can figure it out/contract Spotify. Groove integration was a good idea on FH, but Groove wasn't successful. Having the ability to fully mute all music sounds would also be nice (unlike FH4).
Vehicles: As I said, I will not be going over brands, but I would like to see a variety of entry level cars, sports cars, super cars, hyper cars and full on race cars. Concept cars would be great, as they are seen in limited fashion on most open world titles. I'd like trucks and SUVs as well for off roading and to maintain a wide variety of vehicles on par with FH4. I’d also like to see a vehicle categorization similar to FH4 (i.e. Hypercars, classic muscle, etc.). While I'd like to see a variety of vehicle types, I'd still prefer to see quality over quantity. Each vehicle needs to be replicated well and many should have extensive customization. We should be able to favorite cars and also choose a random car (totally random or random from favorites for whatever vehicles are applicable to the given event or freeroam. We should be able to tag vehicles as designed for off-road, wet driving, drifting, drag, etc. These will just be two examples, but we should be able to provide donor cars to speciality shops and convert them into improved, rarer editions. Two conversions that I'll reference would be converting a Porsche Carrera GT into a Gemballa Mirage GT or a Mustang GT into a Saleen S302. A growing variety of vehicles over the course of time, similar to FH4 and TC2.
Visual Customization: No visual adjustments will relate to performance gains or losses (i.e. camber, wheel swaps/sizes, bodykits, etc.) other than you will need to equip some form of spoilewing to adjust rear downforce. We should be able to set wheels smaller than stock, as well as larger. Track width should be an option with multiple sliders (like NFS2015). We should be given manufacturer options for paint, wheels and interior choices, etc. (TDU2/TC2). We should be able to save paint colors (MCLA), instead of just having them in recents and eventually disappear (FH). We should be able to adjust trim as chrome, titanium, gold, black, etc. (MC3) The paint options of NFS Heat and MCLA would be nice, such as gloss, metallic flake with size options, carbon fiber varieties, chrome, matte, satin, fading from left to right as well as top to bottom and the ability to add multiple colors in a color shifting paint job (MC3), colored nitrous (MC3/NFSH), colored tire smoke (GTA5/NFSH) and backfire (NFSH), tire design (MCLA/NFSH), wide body kits (both from manufacturers and developer designed), bumpers, spoilers/wings, skirts, mirrors and fenders (non real life brands can autosculpt like NFSC). Neon colors designs and patterns (TC2/NFSH), hydraulics (MCLA) and airbags (MCLA/NFSH) Brake calipers should be able to be from brands (MCLA/NFSH) or painted (TC2). Interior parts such as steering wheels and seats (MCLA), along with materials, alcantara, suede, leather, plastic, carbon fiber, chrome, etc. (TC2). We should be able to chop the roofs of some vehicles (MC3). Cars have individual licence plates and can get multiple states/countries given they fit the spacing allocated on each vehicle for them (MCLA) Tinted headlight and taillight housings are great options along with light bulb temperatures. Although it isn’t the taste of many people, we should be able to do all kinds of unique styles, such as monster truck (or at least an extreme lift), donk, bosozoku and even NHRA style drag body modifications (with optional wheelie bar) for some of the vehicles you would see them on in real life, but modifications this drastic will impact performance and vehicle hit box/collision physics. Vinyls on widows should be a thing with the ability to make vinyls able to utilize different paint materials (NFSH). FH4 has the numerical system to mirror and scale things fairly well. I’d like to keep the placement system of FH4. Also, the FH4 marketplace to download tunes and designs is the best I've seen, so that can be duplicated. As this will blanket all of the above, some customization parts should be recommended by a popular magazine or website. MC3 did this with Dub and created a fantastic game with a lasting legacy and many of the style options were relevant when the game was released and for a while after. We should be able to adjust tire width and profile, similar to MCLA. The ability to paint engine bays and accent parts would be nice, similar to NFS UG2. Custom exhaust tips/mufflers would be something nice that many other games have incorporated.
Performance Customization and Tuning: PI system like Forza with classes (but actively tuned for balance), different turbos for rpm ranges/turbo lag, supercharger. We should have different tire compounds, even being able to set for front/rear separately. As mentioned earlier, a RWD car that is tuned well and driven well should have the potential to beat an AWD vehicle due to it being lighter. Keeping the tuning settings of what you can adjust would be ideal. We should have the ability to combine the live tuning of NFSH, but enhance it while at a test track (with an off road area in the middle) connected to the tuning shop. You can isolate many tuning options and slide them around while hot lapping. I’d like the ability to run fat rear drag tires, unlike FH4 where it’s just a tire compound.
Audio: This is something that will be very important to many, so great sounds like the noise of turbos on NFS2015 and raw engine noises of FH2 and other games held to a high standard will be important to nail. Exhaust tuning from NFSH was nice, but I would like to see a little more of a difference in the sound with this idea further improved. Getting the proper transmission noises can be useful for cars on top of just the engine noise. Tires skidding is nice noise to get correct for realism as well. Having nice ambient sounds will also be important for immersiveness, such as birds chirping, waves washing up on the beach, wind noises and great echo sounds for traveling through tunnels or densely surrounded areas, such as down a row of highrise buildings). Other than making a car sound how it sounds and making realistic sounds for the environment, there is not much more to be said. It's a moderately limited description, but still something that is pivotal.
Story/post launch content: I would like to see a sense of progression built up throughout the game by starting in a low end car as someone who freshly arrived in the are the map takes place in (MCLA), maybe the antagonist could be someone who scammed you in a previous city or dismissed your talent at the beginning of the game. For me, the outright story isn't too important, but can contribute to how much you will enjoy a racing game. Any DLC map expansion needs to be seamless and not require a separate load in, similar to Burnout Paradise Big Surf Island bridge or (MCLA South Central expansion) and unlike FH4 Fortune Island. The 1000 Club was a great thing that occurred on FH1 that would be nice to bring reason to use every car and for the 100%ers to have something else to chase. Police are something that hasn't been done extremely well in a racing only game in a very long time, in my opinion. I would ideally focus on everything else before attempting to add police in. If they were added in, something along the lines of NFSMW (2005) would be nice, but with higher stakes. We should have an end-game hero car, similar to the M3 GTR from NFSMW, but make it a car that isn't already iconic from another game, movie or real life racing, as people wouldn't think of the hero car associated to this hypothetical game, but related to whatever it was previously iconic in, as whatever work that went into making it that car would go to waste as people would want to overwrite that design. Alongside the hero car, we should also have a couple cars that are unique variations of pre-existing cars (Dub Edition cars of MCLA) for other special events (MCLA hard tournaments/FH3 street race bosses). The post-launch support needs to be good, unlike NFSH. Adding cars monthly would be a great start, along with any necessary QoL updates.
Sorry for any formatting or grammatical issues. I’d like to hear any additional features to add into racing games from the feedback of other people or changes that they would prefer. Also, if there are any ideas in here that others would like to emphasize. Any of this content is free for content creators to recycle if that is desired. I’d like to see some of these ideas be passed around and heard to developers on what could be improved upon. Many games have great ideas and I’d like to see them build off of each other’s greatness.

Kennedy and Heidi: Vicarious Patricide as Tony’s Decompensation

At the risk of needless redundancy, I think it’s helpful to summarize Tony’s state of mind going into the episode Kennedy and Heidi. His consciousness is teeming with ancient but recently-agitated memories showcasing his father’s violence and toxic influence, like Johnny shooting a hole through Livia’s hairdo and baptizing him in the act of murder. He’s unable to shake stories of parental neglect leading to tragic outcomes for children. He’s painfully aware of Christopher’s hatred of him and desire for murderous revenge, feelings ultimately rooted in the fact that Tony guided him into the same corrupt existence into which he himself had been led by Johnny, Junior, and company, suggesting a reciprocal, if unconscious, rage by Tony towards those men. His subconscious mind is under constant assault from hats and movie posters and coffee mugs bearing the image of a bloody meat cleaver, an emblem of his own lost childhood innocence and inculcation by his father into his brutal, ugly vocation. He is racked with acute but intense guilt over the role he thinks his life’s example has played in shaping his son’s values and poor sense of self-worth. And he is still repressing a mountain of hurt over the fact that his uncle and second father tried not once but twice to kill him, a repression Melfi warned would someday result in a total collapse of his defense mechanisms, that is, a collapse of his paternal hero-worship and related quest for the macho validation that has prevented him from critically examining his father, uncle, and the men upon whom he modeled his life.
Now consider the circumstances immediately before the crash. Tony and Chris are on a routine drive back from business in Christopher’s new black Cadillac SUV (the first Cadillac Chris has ever owned, incidentally.) The conversation turns to life priorities. Chris, conspicuously clad in a Cleaver hat, specifically mentions how Kaitlyn has changed his priorities, and Tony mentions the “shit with Junior”. So the context is immediately pregnant with the fact that Junior shot and nearly killed Tony within the past year and with the fact that Chris is in a new place of responsibility, a position where he is, for the first time, truly the custodian and trustee for another life.
In a perfectly-timed illustration of just how ill-equipped Chris is to live up to those responsibilities, he nervously and repeatedly fiddles with the car stereo, fidgets, and widens his eyes, telegraphing to Tony that he is high as a kite on drugs. “Comfortably Numb” swells on the sound system as Tony stares at him, the lyrics underscoring that, in that moment, he does not see Chris as a youngster, as the “adorable kid” he once road around in the basket of his bicycle, but as a grown man:
When I was a child I caught a fleeting glimpse Out of the corner of my eye I turned to look but it was gone I cannot put my finger on it now The child is grown, the dream is gone
Chris swerves, and the crash happens seconds later.

Tony as the Child in the Carseat

It’s critical to note that Tony initially manifests every intention of helping Chris, even as he’s fighting his own injuries. “I’m comin’,” he says as Chris asks for help. His expression and demeanor only change when he realizes what Chris means by “help”. “I’ll never pass a drug test,” Chris moans. “What?” Tony asks incredulously as Chris is inhaling his own blood. Almost simultaneously, Tony turns towards the back and sees that a tree limb has penetrated the passenger compartment, lodging in Kaitlyn’s car seat like a spear. While Tony would somewhat exaggerate the size of the branch in later narrations of the event, there’s no question that it was large enough to have impaled or seriously injured an infant.
Even after this warning shot over the bow, Tony apparently intends to help Chris, coming over to the driver’s side and breaking the window when he couldn’t get the door open. He draws his cell phone to call for help but stops when Chris again mentions being doped up, which suggests that Chris is more concerned about the legal consequences of his intoxication than about the fact that he is drowning in his own blood, completely belying his claim to a life newly ordered around the lofty priority of fatherhood.
That’s the moment when Tony forms a genuine murderous intent, an intent that has little to do with Christopher’s animosity towards him or the danger that he might flip. Those are conscious, background motives that help Tony rationalize and make sense of his actions later. But the factor impelling him to end Christopher’s life is his own, fundamental identification with the child who might just as easily have been killed or seriously harmed in that carseat.
To objectify this point, there is a slow pan of the limb sticking through the seat as Tony performs the suffocation, clearly not a shot representing Tony’s vision or gaze at that moment but objectively corroborating the earlier angle when Tony glances back and we see the seat from his point of view. The juxtaposition of these shots – subjective and objective – tells me the carseat is not just a convenient excuse for Tony. This is what he’s really feeling. In this moment, he is the phantom child in that carseat, a child whose safety and well-being come second to his father’s corrupt values and reckless self-indulgence, a child whose soul and humanity are metaphorically impaled by riding in and being taught to drive his father’s black Cadillac.
The exclamation point on the symbolism is provided by Christopher’s hat. Incredibly, it remains on his head throughout the crash and suffocation, its bloody cleaver logo pointing towards Tony when the car comes to rest. As Tony acts consciously on behalf of an innocent child, the symbol of his own lost childhood innocence is directly before him. And, for good measure, the cap and logo stare back at him in the hospital from the gurney laden with Christopher’s bloody clothing and the black bag containing his dead body. (The logo antagonizes Tony a final time from his coffee mug the next morning before he angrily tosses the mug into his backyard woods.)
Several points about the suffocation itself are remarkable. First was the look of absolute depravity on Tony’s face as he watched Christopher struggle to breathe. This look was unlike any ever seen on Tony’s face at any other moment in the series. Even when committing other personal and deadly acts of violence, his face and demeanor had always betrayed a commensurate level of animus, an active, passionate intent. In contrast, he reached through the window and pinched Christopher’s nose – and maintained that hold – with remarkable calm. His face and eyes throughout the suffocation were paradoxically both incredibly intense and completely devoid of human emotion, a look far more disturbing than any look of mere rage he’d ever worn before.
Second, although this act was, in my judgment, clearly about the release of Tony’s pent up rage towards his father figures, the method of killing evokes Livia. Besides her conspiracy with Junior to kill Tony (which she rationalized was for his own good) and general obsession with stories of child deaths, she had once threatened to “smother [her children] with a pillow” to save them from a fate she deemed even worse. Tony grabbed a pillow intending to smother her in the season one finale before nursing home personnel intervened. In Members Only, Tony spoke of being smothered with a pillow as a suitable form of euthanasia. Its functional equivalent at the scene of the crash had a definite vibe of putting Chris out of his own – and everyone’s – misery. So, in killing his “father”, Tony was also paradoxically suffocating his “son”, thereby channeling Livia’s filicidal urges and concept of mercy killing.
The most spine-tingling resonance with the scene comes from two season four episodes where Tony’s deep identification with “innocents” – be they children or animals – once again comes to the fore, as does his appreciation for the consequences of Chris continuing to use drugs. In Whoever Did This, Tony warns Christopher that he “can’t be high on heroine and raise kids.” And in The Strong, Silent Type, after learning that a doped-up Chris accidentally smothered and suffocated Adriana’s dog, Tony ominously snaps, “You suffocated little Cossette? I oughta suffocate you, you prick!” It’s such perfect foreshadowing that the earlier episodes seem to have been written with the outcome of Kennedy and Heidi in mind.

Righteous Retribution as the Explanation for Tony’s Lack of Sorrow

As previously noted, the most troubling aspect of the episode from the standpoint of character consistency and plausibility was not the fact that Tony murdered Chris. It was his vacuous expression during the killing and the fact that he never betrayed a moment’s genuine sorrow or regret afterwards. He remained, in fact, defiantly happy and unconflicted about it, especially to Melfi, and was sincerely troubled that neither she nor anyone else could see how Christopher’s death rescued Kaitlyn from a lifetime of risks and harm that she would naturally suffer as the daughter of a drug addict (and mob captain).
In his therapy scenes with Melfi, real and dream, Tony even makes the very contrast I raise, noting that he’s never felt this way after murdering any other person close to him. He alludes to his sorrow over Pussy and specifically allows that murdering Tony B left him “prostate [sic] with grief.” In effect, Tony himself is revealing that this killing feels righteous and justified to him on an instinctive level and is therefore not one about which he can feel guilt or sorrow.
That sentiment makes no sense if his dominant motives were those he talked about in therapy: Christopher’s animosity and resentment towards him after the Adriana hit and his drug-use and consequent risk to flip. Whatever weight those factors carry in justifying murder in the corrupt “ethics” of the mob (which, in any case, is less than the weight of the transgressions by Pussy and Tony B), they carry absolutely no legitimate moral weight outside it and could not sustain in Tony the sense of just triumph that he felt in response to Christopher’s death. What could inspire that sense of triumph is the perceived liberation of a child from a dangerous and toxic father, experienced subconsciously as vicarious retribution for the abuse and harm he himself suffered at the hands of his own father and uncle.

Significance of the Names “Kennedy” and “Heidi”

“Kennedy” and “Heidi” are the names of the young passenger and driver, respectively, in the car that sideswipes Christopher’s SUV before the fateful crash. The girls are barely onscreen a few seconds, just long enough to (somewhat artificially) learn their names in the following exchange:
Kennedy: Maybe we should go back, Heidi! Heidi: Kennedy, I’m on my learner’s permit after dark!
Much forum debate after the first airing of the episode centered around the significance, if any, of these names. I propose a related but even more basic question: why are the girls present in the scene at all?
Tony’s windfall opportunity to murder Chris and pass it off as death from accidental injury was entirely dependent upon being unobserved by others after the crash. Given Christopher’s intoxicated state and inattention to the curvy road while he fiddled with radio controls, a mere swerve and over-correction or swerve to avoid an animal (Tony’s crash with Adriana, anyone?) would have easily sufficed to trigger the accident but without the problematic involvement of another car, the driver of which would have to be made to flee the scene illegally and in contravention of the ethics and instincts of at least 95% of the motorists on the road. So the very fact that another car is involved, complicating both the story and the filming, suggests some symbolic or subtextual design to the involvement related specifically to the momentous event occurring right after the crash.
One aspect of that design is revealed and amplified when a grieving Kelly shows up at Christopher’s wake with dark hair framing her face and large, dark sunglasses covering her eyes. A member of the crew remarks, “Look at her. Like a movie star.” An odd look immediately crosses Tony’s face as he spontaneously responds, “Jackie Kennedy”, noting Kelly’s resemblance to the widow of John F. Kennedy.
In my mind, this striking moment in the episode can have only one purpose, and that’s to evoke Johnny Boy in relation to Christopher via a kind of symbolic math. If Kelly = Jackie Kennedy, then Chris = JFK = Johnny Boy since JFK was the explicit parallel figure for Johnny in In Camelot, the first episode of the series depicting cracks in the foundation of Tony’s paternal hero worship. When that foundation completely crumbles inside Tony’s subconscious a season and a half later, it’s entirely fitting that the JFK/Johnny parallel is renewed.
As for the name “Heidi”, most folks around these parts felt it was meant to evoke the idea of “orphan” because of the famous Swiss orphan tale of the same name and because Kaitlyn (and Paulie) both lost parents in the episode. That’s an entirely plausible analysis that requires no expansion, although I’m inclined to think there’s more to it than that, starting with the analogy of Tony himself to “Heidi”. No, Tony was never technically orphaned, though he arguably suffered more as the son of Johnny and Livia than if he had been. He was certainly deprived of real parental love and guidance, on both sides, and that roughly equates to the definition of “orphan”.
Before discussing this episode for the first time, I never knew that Heidi was the story of an orphan, only that it was some kind of tale for children. And I knew that only because of the epic 1968 football game between Joe Namath’s Jets and the Oakland Raiders, the climactic ending of which (an improbable comeback by the Raiders) was cut off abruptly for television viewers at the end of its scheduled broadcast slot so that a movie version of Heidi could begin airing on time. I was only four at the time of this debacle but recall my parents talking about it – and the considerable chaos it caused at NBC and at telephone switchboards around the country – for years afterwards. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heidi_Game
It wouldn’t become clear until the end of Made In America, but there’s an obvious parallel to the Heidi phenomenon in the wind-up of The Sopranos. Consider that, like the Heidi Game broadcast, Made in America featured an abrupt, unexpected termination of excruciatingly tense action at a penultimate moment, pre-empting audience experience of what appeared to be an imminent and momentous climax. The Sopranos ending may not have disabled an entire telephone network, but it certainly generated an enormous amount of controversy that, for better or worse, persists to this day.
Beyond that, there were enough other football references in the final Sopranos episodes, and especially Jets references, to warrant further consideration of this football connotation for “Heidi”. In Remember When, Tony’s betting losses on Jets football games prompt his call to Hesh for a bridge loan. Later that same episode, Paulie annoys Tony and company with yet another old tale, this one relating how, after witnessing Joe Namath stagger drunk into a bar the night before a game, he bet a load of cash the following day on the Jets’ opponent. In Chasing It, Tony gets inside information on a Jets football game and is irate when Carmela refuses to bet money on it. The episode features a closeup of a large newspaper headline, “Jets Bomb Chargers”.
In Blue Comet, then-current coach of the Jets, Eric Mangini, makes a cameo appearance in Vesuvio, with Artie informing a suitably-impressed Tony so the two can go over and shake hands. News articles at the time clarified that the cameo wasn’t Mangini’s idea but the idea of Sopranos producers, who contacted him months in advance and made accommodations in the shooting schedule around his availability. So this seemed more than a casual desire to have some generic celebrity show up.
That especially seems true considering Mangini was given no dialog and that his meeting with Tony and Artie was only depicted in the silent background of a conversation between Charmaine and Carmela. Mangini’s only purpose on set was apparently to show his face briefly and to have the fact of his identity (Tony has to tell a bewildered Carm that Mangini is the head coach of the Jets) permeate the minds of the audience and the subtext of the scene, which is ultimately about chickens coming home to roost on Tony and Carmela because of the lives they chose.
As alter egos for Tony and Carmela throughout the series, folks who took the proverbial “other path” in life, Artie and (especially) Charmaine engage in subtle gloating in the scene. Football coaching was firmly established as Tony’s “road not taken” in Test Dream, so having an actual football coach present in the episode where the unsavory and downright deadly consequences of his chosen vocation are crashing in all around him provides dramatic ballast. All the better to have the coach in the scene be the coach of the team involved in the Heidi game in view of the ending planned for the following episode.
And speaking again of that ending, the wall behind Tony in Holsten’s is consumed with four large murals specifically brought in by the production crew for the shoot. The largest and most centered depicts a huge, light-colored building with lots of windows, somewhat reminiscent of the Inn at the Oaks in Tony’s coma dream. It’s apparently a high school, however, as it is flanked on either side by images of football players in full uniform with what appear to be names and year of graduation engraved at the bottom. To the side and extreme left is a mural of a tiger and the caption “Class of 1973” at the bottom. The tiger is presumably the mascot for the team and school represented in the other murals. So there is a strong symbolic presence of “football” in the last scene of the series, particularly of high school football from roughly the era when Tony would have entered high school.
Finally, though it may be completely insignificant, when Tony tells Carm about the accident from his hospital stretcher in Kennedy and Heidi, he mentions that he re-injured his knee, “the one from high school.” That certainly sounds like a reference to an old high school football injury.
If these loose strands from multiple episodes are indeed intended to connote football in relation to the name “Heidi”, what does that actually mean in the context of the episode Kennedy and Heidi? What does football have to do with Tony killing Chris or, more precisely, with him killing his father in the guise of Chris?
The linchpin in that symbolism, it seems to me, is Tony’s old high school football coach, the guy who would have been his coach when he originally injured his knee, the guy Tony dreamt repeatedly of trying to silence or kill, the guy whose puzzling duality in Test Dream suddenly makes sense when he’s viewed as a classic, Freudian composite of opposites, specifically a composite of Tony’s opposing father figures with Johnny dressed in the physiognomy of Coach Molinaro by Tony’s subconscious in order to render acceptable imagery of his latent, patricidal feelings.
If you further allow, as I do, that the Johnny look-alike shooting at Tony with a scoped rifle (ala Oswald/”Kennedy”) in that same dream is yet another Freudian “reversal into the opposite” by Tony’s subconscious to disguise his repressed paternal rage, then the Kennedy/Heidi connection is pretty clear. The names are presented proximate to the crash to connote that, in killing Chris, Tony has finally acted out the Test Dream imagery that haunted him for years: he has (symbolically) killed his father, the “Kennedy” and “Heidi” of his dream.

“He’s Dead”

In my judgment, this explains Tony’s otherwise puzzling, peyote-induced insight when he proclaims, “He’s dead,” after winning at roulette on 3 successive spins, prompting him to fall to the floor in spectacular and uncontrollable laughter. What other, real death could have inspired such a euphoric and epiphanic reaction? What real death could Tony only have appreciated while in a drug-induced, altered state of consciousness?
Many felt the line referred to Christopher because he’d just died, obviously, and because Tony’s gambling luck suddenly changed afterward. That analysis never made sense to me.
First, Tony plays roulette at the casino while sober when he first arrives in Vegas and loses every round. Chris was already dead at that time, as Tony well knew and accepted. Indeed, Tony was never in any state of denial about Christopher’s death (or about having killed him.) He embraced it, both consciously and in his dream therapy session with Melfi after the crash.
The “he’s dead” insight occurs only after Tony takes peyote and notices a sudden and complete about-face in gambling luck. Why would he need psychedelic drugs to suddenly realize what he already knew and accepted about Chris? And why would Christopher’s death be tied in his mind to his own gambling luck anyway? No prior connection between those two things had ever been suggested.
On the other hand, Tony’s sudden escalation in gambling, which coincided with the agitation and intensification of his latent rage towards his father(s), could easily be seen as a subconscious rebellion against the stern, anti-gambling lecture Johnny imparted the night Tony witnessed the cleaver incident. To the extent that the rebellion results in huge financial losses and self destruction, it obviously fails. His father retains ultimate power and authority. To the extent the rebellion results in huge winnings, it succeeds, and Tony vanquishes his father.
That conquest was the ineffable and elusive “high” that Tony was subconsciously pursuing in Chasing It but which he could not articulate to Melfi. Thus the sudden change in gambling fortune on his Vegas trip is easily tied in Tony’s drug-altered psyche to a euphoric realization that he has conquered or symbolically killed his father, none of which Tony could appreciate without a vastly altered state of consciousness.
And that leads to why he went to Vegas in the first place. He asks that question out loud to the Vegas prostitute, Sonia, immediately before admitting that Christopher once mentioned taking peyote with her. Tony then confesses to having always wanted to try the drug.
Clearly, then, he didn’t just happen to pick Vegas and didn’t just happen to make contact with this girl. His subconscious was pushing him to that venue because he craved the enlightenment of a peyote experience. So while Tony’s real motives for the murder, and for his otherwise inexplicable jubilance afterward, were completely closed off to his conscious mind, somehow he sensed their existence and yearned to unlock and understand them. However his peyote revelations didn’t stop with simply understanding why he killed Chris.

“I Get It. I Get It!”

Tony’s desert epiphany is a bookend to his near-death coma experience and, I believe, can only be fully understood in relation to it. Yet exploring that relationship is a journey all unto itself, calling not only for consideration of the coma episodes and Kennedy and Heidi but the meaning of the cut to black that ends the series. While exploring the religious and spiritual underpinnings of those episodes is of even more weight and interest to me personally than the issue of Tony’s motives in killing Christopher, it deserves and demands its own, dedicated discussion. For now, I’d simply like to posit what I strongly believe Tony’s epiphany to have been with only minimal argumentation as to why I hold that belief.
The epiphany is presaged when Tony enters the casino on his peyote trip and notes that the roulette wheel is built on the same principle as the solar system. The ball spins round and round the center or “sun” of the wheel because of two delicately-balanced but largely opposing phenomena: the momentum of the ball (which, without the wheel, would carry the ball away in a straight line) and the centripetal force of the wheel (applied by the rim, which continuously pulls the ball towards the center even as the ball’s momentum continuously pulls it on a path perpendicular to the centripetal force.) The antagonism (or cooperation, if you prefer) of the forces gives rise to a unified system: an orbit.
If this sounds a bit like the Bell Labs scientist’s explanation of how two tornadoes are in fact just facets of one, unified system of wind, it’s likely no mere coincidence. As Hal Holbrook’s character argued, separateness is a mirage. The universe, and everything in it, is one big soup of molecules interacting in cause/effect fashion according to laws, making it one whole, not a bunch of discrete parts. “Everything is everything,” as the black rapper reduced it.
That was the philosophy that really made an impression on Tony in the days and weeks following his coma. The principles of quantum physics articulated by Holbrook’s character are likely as close as you can get to a scientific codification of Bhuddism and therefore reinforced much of what the Bhuddist monks conveyed to Tony in his coma. The monks laughed when Tony claimed he wasn’t Finnerty and explained that there really is no “you” and “me, that death would bring an obliteration of individuality. Separate consciousness – and the consciousness of separateness – is an illusion of the living.
So all this laid the philosophical groundwork for Tony’s Las Vegas trip. In that trip, Tony seeks out a girl with whom Chris had slept, then sleeps with her himself. He mentions having refrained from a longstanding desire to try peyote because he always felt the weight of his responsibilities, an implied contrast to Christopher, who always indulged in drugs despite his responsibilities. The idea that Tony was seeking to almost live life in Christopher’s skin in the Las Vegas portion of the episode was something several posters mentioned in first discussions after Kennedy and Heidi aired. Even the girl, Sonia, remarks how similar Tony and Chris are, a somewhat dubious observation that somehow offends Tony but which also helps define his impending epiphany.
That epiphany is spurred when the rising sun flares at him over the desert mountain vista. This recalls Tony’s earlier comparison of the roulette wheel to the solar system. It also resonates completely with the fact that Kevin Finnerty was a solar heating salesman from Kingman, Arizona, a town which, not coincidentally, lies 95 miles southeast of Las Vegas and shares the same desert landscape. Also not coincidental, IMO, is the fact that in the prior episode, Christopher spoke of the perks of joining witness protection and of “living large” in Arizona.
So I believe that, in that desert sunrise on the cusp of Arizona, in fulfillment of his identity as Kevin Finnerty, solar heating salesman, Tony saw his “son” – Christopher – “rise” and realized that, in murdering him days before, he (Tony) was really “rising” as a “son” against Johnny Boy. And in that linkage, he suddenly realized that “everything is [indeed] everything.” He is both Chris and Johnny Boy, both abused and misguided son and abusing, misguiding father. He is murdering uncle and would-be murdered nephew. He is both the mother that sees suffocation as mercy killing and the son who is suffocated. Christopher is both his son and his father. Johnny Boy is Coach Molinaro. “Kennedy” is “Heidi”. Opposites are really two sides of the same coin. In that fleeting moment of insight, Tony was truly feeling “one” with the universe.

The Second Coming

The episode following Kennedy and Heidi is titled The Second Coming after the Yeats poem that grips AJ in the English lit class he’s auditing. While the poem speaks to the bleakness of his depression and outlook on life at that particular time, there’s little doubt that – like everything of substantial weight in the Sopranos universe – it ultimately relates, first and foremost, to Tony. First referenced in the Cold Cuts therapy session dealing with pent-up rage where Tony’s deep shame from the cleaver incident is finally revealed, the poem seems the veritable inspiration for the storyline (as interpreted in this article) that culminates in Christopher’s murder:
The Second Coming By William Butler Yeats
Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand. The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi Troubles my sight; somewhere in sands of the desert A shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it Reel shadows of indignant desert birds. The darkness drops again; but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
The widening gyre, the orbit that breaks down when the center can no longer hold, is clearly a parallel to the decompensation of which Melfi warned, the point at which Tony’s defenses after Junior’s second murder attempt could no longer hold and the underlying pathological rage at his fathers would take over. True to the poem, a “blood-dimmed tide was loosed”, inspired by a perverse compassion for the “innocent”. While “the best” all mourned Christopher and thought his death a tragedy, Tony, “the worst”, was full of passionate intensity and could not understand why no one else saw the greater good in Christopher’s death.
The “revelation” occurs in a “waste of desert sand”, imagery easily compatible with Tony’s “I get it” moment in the Nevada/Arizona desert. The uniquely depraved look on his face as he suffocated Christopher is evoked by the line describing a “gaze as blank and pitiless as the sun”. “Twenty years of stony sleep” refers to the decades of denial Tony maintained, the defense mechanisms that kept him all his life from confronting and admitting that, in some very real ways, he hated his father. It’s a figurative sleep that was suggested literally in the noted fact that so many episodes in season 6B started with Tony in a deep sleep. Somnolence was suggested even in the choice of the song “Comfortably Numb” as soundtrack in the moments immediately preceding the crash, the moments right before the hour of the “rough beast” finally arrived. Even the incidentals are perfect allusions, as with the image of “stony sleep” being turned into a nightmare by a “rocking cradle”, or, in this case, by a car seat with a branch sticking through it.
I’m intrigued by the line describing the emerging beast as having “lion body”. It may mean absolutely nothing. But among the story points worth considering in relation to it are the tiger on the wall in Holsten’s and the enigmatic cat in Made In America.
More obscure is the fact that in Remember When, the single episode most explicitly dealing with the violent release of stifled paternal rage, Carter Chong described his grandfather as a “lion” and noted that his father owned “Grumman” stock. (Grumman manufactured a number of high-profile fighter military aircraft, most of them named for some kind of cat, e.g., Panther, Jaguar, Tomcat, Tigercat.) Carter was reviewing these facts to himself in the scene immediately preceding his vicious attack on Junior, suggesting that, in acting out on his stifled paternal hatred, he was adopting the predatory, aggressive characteristics of a wild cat. Notably, when Junior, the paternal surrogate who modeled this kind of aggressive behavior to Carter, was seen at the end of that episode bruised and literally defanged, his sunken mouth void of false teeth, he was stroking a harmless little housecat on his lap. Once a lion, the former mob boss was a lion no more.

Asbestos Dumping as a Metaphor for Tony’s Toxic Spill of Rage

Kennedy and Heidi opens with a controversy between Tony and Phil Leotardo over asbestos disposal. One of Tony’s contractors was removing asbestos from old buildings, while following none of the strict (and expensive) asbestos-handling laws regulating worker and public safety, and was seeking to dump completely uncontained truck-fulls at waste stations controlled by Phil. Phil’s guys were denying the trucks the right to dump. As a consequence, huge, openly-smoking asbestos mounds were building up at job sites.
After Christopher’s death, Tony was doing little to find a solution, skipping town to gamble, get laid, and get high and leaving the contractor high and dry. Finally, near the very end of the episode, the contractor dumps heaps of asbestos at dawn in an open marsh area resembling the New Jersey Meadowlands.
Asbestos is a naturally occurring mineral that gained widespread use in the 19th and 20th centuries as an ingredient in various building industry materials – including wall compounds, insulation, and roofing materials – primarily because of its extreme insulative properties and resistance to heat and fire. In the last 40 years, it’s become better-known for its cancer-causing and toxic effects on those mining and working with it in manufacturing, demolition/remodeling, or other “raw” environments.
Both the heat resistance and toxicity of asbestos make the shoddy removal/dumping storyline a compelling metaphor for Tony’s equally shoddy “dumping” in Kennedy and Heidi. The smoldering heat and flames from his hatred towards his father and uncle were contained beneath his consciousness by an insulating firewall of denial and repression. In essence, this denial and repression was Tony’s psychological asbestos, and it (more or less) contained the heat and fire within him for 47 years.
But it finally broke down, allowing the flames to rage and do damage and necessitating a messy disposal. Unfortunately the breakdown didn’t happen where it should have, in his therapist’s office as the result of honest introspection and dialog about little things like his uncle trying to kill him twice and his father indoctrinating him to murder at 22. That would have been the equivalent of careful, legally-compliant asbestos removal. Instead the breakdown occurred in a roadside ravine and the resulting “waste [in the] desert sand” was every bit as toxic as the smoking piles illegally dumped in the Meadowlands immediately before the desert epiphany and which we saw reprised in the very first shot of the following episode.
Think about that for a moment. Tony’s “I get it” moment was literally sandwiched between shots of noxious mounds of asbestos blowing in the New Jersey wind, a significant clue that some other kind of perversely cathartic disposal was in the middle of that sandwich.

The Orbit of the ‘Blue Comet’: Long Journey to Nowhere

It’s fair to ask: if the broad strokes of my interpretation are valid, what impact did the epiphany have on Tony going forward? After the drugs wore off, did he actually retain any specific understanding of his subconscious motives for killing Chris? Was he left only with the impression that he had enjoyed a very brief moment of enlightenment but without intellectual distillation of the enlightenment itself?
Because the insight was founded upon the secret that he had murdered Chris, even if Tony had retained it, he couldn’t overtly share it with anyone. Still, I lean toward the interpretation that the specifics (at least the ones I proffered) were lost to him when the altered state of consciousness ceased. When he tried to describe the magic of what he experienced in the desert to his crew, he could only come up with the most mundane, inadequate words: “The sun . . . came up.” They all looked at him like he was half retarded.
He was slightly more specific with Melfi, offering that he saw “for pretty certain” that this reality is not all there is. He couldn’t define the alternative but was still convinced there was “something else”.
He did speak in therapy of appreciating a balance and unity in opposites that he hadn’t appreciated before, a “ying” [sic] and “yang”. And he offered that “mothers are like buses . . . the vehicle that gets us here,” but that, once here, we are all on our own, individual journeys (mothers included.) So, to the extent his epiphany comported with what he revealed in therapy, it seems to have had little to do with fathers and with Christopher’s murder and more to do with letting go (finally) of some of his issues with his mother.
But perhaps the best clue to his residual state of understanding came when he indicated that some of what he thought he had grasped in the desert now eluded him. “You think you know, you think you learn something . . . like when I got shot,” he begins. Then, speaking specifically about the peyote experience, he reports that the insight gained is “kinda hard to describe. . . . You know, you have these thoughts, and you almost grab it . . . and then . . . ftt.” He flicks his fingers away from his chin as if to indicate “nothing”. So, to paraphrase Edna St. Vincent Millay, a fragment of what he knew remains, but, apparently, the best is lost.
It wouldn’t take long for all of it to be lost. By the time Tony sits with AJ’s female therapist in Made In America, “going about in pity” for himself because of who his mother was, he has come full circle, essentially back to where he was to start the series. Like a “blue comet”, his orbit was highly elliptical, if not erratic, and carried with it the potential of veering off into deep space or crashing into the sun. But despite killing his own nephew, having a near-death experience himself, and saving his son from an act of suicide, the orbit held. The sober breakthrough never came. The repudiation of his father and of his way of life never took hold in his consciousness. And so, by series’ end, we, like Tony, were exhausted from a long journey that ultimately took us nowhere.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5