Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/02/19/stay-puft-marshmallow-man-tiki.html
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Ugly. Or not ugly enough.
It looks ok as a mug, but i think it needs to have a more stylized look. It doesn’t quite have that tiki vibe to it.
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I’ve noticed this trend that has really gotten out of control. A company comes up with a form and if that form is popular they apply every imaginable popular character to that form and take in the dough. Whether it be funko pops, legos, munny, tsum tsums or a dozen others… I feel like the tiki mug thing has taken that same turn in the past few years. It’s not about tiki anymore so much as “what popular characters can we make in this form”…
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In the case of these pop culture tiki mugs, the common complaint (aside from their total randomness) is that they all are in that same constipated pose. There’s been a couple decent ones that almost work. I can imagine something like an Ewok or a planet of the apes character or certain movie monsters almost fitting into a tiki theme. (Which I know is a ridiculous bastardized version of Polynesian culture to begin with… maybe trying to put any limits on it is futile)
I’d argue that a good complaint is that a slip cast bit of mass production ceramic is artificially being limited, then sold at $50+…
The thing about mash-ups is that the two things being mixed need to have anything at all to do with each other. I have a shirt that features this image:
I feel like it works because Ghostbusters and Pac-Man share a common theme: ghosts (and the 1980s, if we’re stretching a bit).
Meanwhile, there’s stuff like a shirt featuring Marvel superheroes as Minecraft characters, or these tiki mugs, where the two things have no connection whatsoever. Those really do feel more like something some corporate committee came up with using a list of popular trends chosen and matched at random.
Aw, crap. I’ve looked directly into the trap. Again.
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