Dragon Ball Super Funko Pop takes down Funimation’s website

Dragon Ball fans are heading to the secondhand market to find a limited-edition Funko Pop based on a character from the series’ most recent iteration, Dragon Ball Super. It’s their only option, now that the show’s distributor Funimation has stopped selling the San Diego Comic-Con-exclusive Whis figure following site-crashing amounts of traffic.

Whis is a popular character in Dragon Ball Super, obviously. He first entered the series in the fourteenth Dragon Ball Z film before going on to be a major part of the Super cast. The super-powered angel-slash-martial arts teacher trains the feline God of Destruction Beerus throughout the anime.

There’s already a Funko Pop based on Whis, but this new one is special. It’s metallic, first of all, and Funimation at first sold it only at its San Diego Comic-Con booth. But after the convention ended, the company made stock available through its online store, priced at $24.99.

Funimation/Funko

Not long after sales went live on Monday, July 23, Funimation’s website experienced an overwhelming amount of traffic. The number of people trying to access the online store and purchase the big-headed figure led to a sitewide network error, Funimation tweeted.

“We’ve paused sales of the item and are working on a fix to the tech issues you’ve been experiencing,” reads a tweet from Monday afternoon. “We’re so sorry. While there’s no solid time frame just yet, please know our teams are working AS QUICKLY as they can.”

After nearly a full day of sitewide problems, Funimation came to a disappointing solution. It was pulling the remainder of the Whis Funko Pop stock, instead fulfilling only those orders placed before the store crashed on Monday.

“We appreciate your patience as we review all the individual orders,” the company tweeted in an update on the sale situation. “For those of you who were not able to purchase due to the incredibly high demand, we apologize.”

Fans wanting to buy the $25 item through an official source are bummed, to no one’s surprise. If they don’t mind going the extra mile — and putting in the extra dollars — the secondhand market is happy to accommodate them, however. On eBay, sellers are offering metallic Whis figures either purchased from the Funimation Comic-Con booth or bought online for as much as $200. The average price seems to hover around the $150 range, more than six times the original cost.

We know people are very serious about their Funko Pop collections, and it’s true that Funimation has stopped providing the only trusted way to purchase the exclusive Whis toy online. But weigh that high eBay markup against desires to put Whis on a desk — especially when a standard version is cheaper and more widely available.