When it comes to collecting Funko Pops; Glow-in-the-Dark (GITD) Pops tend to be some of the coolest ones to collect and display. Some Pops may have full body glows (glow particles embedded within the vinyl itself), others may have just minor details glowing (typically glow paint applied to those portions), but no matter the type it’s an extra layer that really causes these figures to… Pop! And as such a proper display should be used to show them off in all their glowy-goodness.
Design
When you first begin to design your glow display, the first thing that needs to be taken into account is where you plan for your glow collection to be located. For Pops to glow at their brightest potential, they need a UV light source to charge the glow (the most common two being the sun and a UV light). So, if you plan to have your collection by a large window that gets sun all day long, you could be fine without the need for a UV light, however, if that’s not the case, then you’ll need to incorporate a UV light into your display. In addition, you’ll also need to determine what type of display you want and how to build it. Do you plan to build a custom shelf/display case? Modify existing furniture? Or something else entirely? From there you can start to build up a list of requirements.
My Requirements
When building my display I had the following requirements:
- Must be able to hold all of my GITD Funko Pops and have extra room for any future GITD Pops (should be obvious, but if I have a certain amount of Pops, I don’t want to build something only for it to no longer suit my needs in a few months).
- Any UV lights that are used must be mostly hidden (just want an overall sleeker look to the overall display).
- Must fit in with my office decor (Again, pretty obvious, but I don’t want a display that doesn’t look like it belongs in the room).
So overall, not that many requirements. At first I thought about making a wall shelving unit for a display, but soon realized that it would probably look a bit messy with cable management and in order to hide some of the lighting, the shelves would need to be on the thicker size. After some thinking though, I soon realized that I could modify an existing furniture item in my office to accommodate a display.
My Build
I decided to use my cube storage unit for a display case since most of it was only being used for temporary storage while I was still getting my office set up just the way I wanted it. The first thing I had to do though was come up with an estimated Pop capacity for the display (keeping in mind that I only wanted to do the top 4 cubes since I still wanted to use the bottom 4 for other items).
Each cube is 13 inches across, so it could fit 3-4 Pops comfortably inside. As a result, if I did all 4 cubes just a single line of Pops, I could hold 16 max; or if I incorporated risers, I could increase my max capacity to 32 Pops.
Going back to my requirements, I wanted to ensure my display looked nice, so I ended up designing my own risers by using a piece of acrylic and 3d printed stands. The benefit of doing so is that I can determine just how much of the Pops in the back are being covered by the Pops in the front. Also, by designing them myself I was able to maximize the entire width of the cube and not be limited to an existing length.
Once I had my risers sorted out, I thought I was near the home stretch. I just had to install some UV lights and I would be done. I found a few small under the cabinet fluorescent lights, and ordered corresponding black light bulbs for them. I went with fluorescent over LED due to having better UV for a cheaper price
With the lights installed, my wife would call it done, but it just didn’t sit right with me. The UV lights were too exposed and I felt like the glow was still very much lacking. I know cable management could’ve helped with some of the look, but I didn’t want to keep moving forward only to have to undo a bunch of the work. So I decided to uninstall the lamps and go in a slightly different direction.
The very first thing I did to see if I could get a much better glow capability was to go out and get a larger black light. So I ended up purchasing a 4 foot long lamp, with the intent of cutting my furniture to make it work (something I was originally trying to avoid by using the smaller lights).
Due to this approach, I now had to cut a slot in the underside of the table top where I could hide the fluorescent light fixture and also cut holes through the individual panels so that the 4 foot long light bulb could span the entire length of the piece. This just turned into a much larger project. So my first task was to disassemble part of the piece so I could properly modify it.
To my surprise (although it really shouldn’t have surprised me), the top piece of the cube storage wasn’t solid wood. Rather it was 2 thin pieces of particle board with a cardboard lattice infill. At first I thought that this would entirely mess my plan up, but I ended up altering my plan slightly. Instead of mounting the lamp fixture directly into the hole, I ended up cutting some pieces of wood to help reinforce the structure, and then attached the lamp fixture to that.
Once all the holes were cut, the lamp was installed, and the furniture piece was reassembled; I was quite happy with how the display was looking. Although, I did still have four small lamps that I had previously purchased…
Putting the old lamps on the bottom, I was really liking how much the Pops were glowing, although similar to my initial issue, I didn’t like how those lamps looked, so I needed a way to better hide them; and unfortunately the shelves were too thin to try and hide them similar to the top. In order to remedy this, I ended up designing and 3D printing a fixture to hide the lights. Along with this, I also redesigned the risers to accommodate 3 shelves instead of 2, raise the lowest level above the bottom shelf light, and to help hide the cable.
Once these modifications were made, I finally felt that my design was done (mostly). Really the only thing I’ll plan to alter in the future is to probably add some wood veneer over the bottom lamp cover so that it blends in with the furniture a little better. But until then, my glow display is finally the way that I want it.
Eccentric Platypus Creations 