Funko Pops, to me.
I understand that some of them are fairly overpriced, but I also really like them as is. It doesn’t work on all characters, but it sometimes work on a lot and there’s so much representation and variety that it’s good to have a few.
If people want to talk about waste of plastic and vinyl, they should bark at the companies who make teeny tiny figurines that serve no purpose and have so little detail that spending any money on them is a waste.
On the matter of “collectible”, how is it even ontologically sound to “collect” things that are expressily produced as collectibles? You collect things, coins, paintings, stamps, phone cards, even gaming cards. All things that exist in their own merit that you choose to collect, usually giving them value according to their accidental rarity.
With this shit you are not collecting, you are just purchasing.