Month: October 2022

Funko’s Star Wars Holiday Snowman 5-Pack: A Genuinely Fun Seasonal Gimmick

Collectible Review · Purchased October 16, 2022 · $92.31 CAD via Amazon.ca

Funko Pop Star Wars Holiday Snowman 5 pack
Star Wars Holiday: Snowman 5-Pack. Photo: Funko

The Setup

An Amazon-exclusive Funko Pop bundle reimagining five Star Wars characters — Darth Vader, a Stormtrooper, Boba Fett, C-3PO, and R2-D2 — as snowmen, complete with snowflake detailing and carrot/twig facial accents, each individually boxed within the set.

The Review

This is exactly the kind of silly, seasonal gimmick that Funko does well — five instantly recognizable characters reimagined just enough to feel novel without losing what makes them recognizable in the first place. Getting five figures individually boxed within one set is a genuinely nice touch too, since it means any of them can be pulled out and displayed or gifted on their own without breaking up a single combined package.

The usual Funko quality-control caveats apply — paint application on mass-produced Pops is always a bit of a lottery, and outer box corners took some minor shelf wear even before I opened them. As an Amazon exclusive, it’s also the kind of thing that will probably command inflated secondary-market prices once it sells out for the season. None of that outweighs how much fun it is as a one-off holiday display piece.

What I Liked

  • Fun, novel holiday reimagining of five instantly recognizable characters
  • Individually boxed figures within the set make gifting or separating them easy
  • Good per-figure value compared to buying five singles

What I Didn’t

  • Usual Funko paint-consistency lottery applies
  • Some minor box wear straight out of shipping
  • Amazon-exclusive status means secondary-market prices will likely climb once sold out

The Verdict

Rating: 4/5

A genuinely charming seasonal gimmick that nails the balance between novelty and recognizability.

Where to Buy

GeForce RTX 3090: Finally Winning the Scalper Lottery

Hardware Review · Purchased September 30, 2022 · $1,752.18 CAD via Amazon.ca

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 graphics card
GeForce RTX 3090. Photo: Nvidia

The Setup

Nvidia’s Ampere-generation flagship, launched all the way back in September 2020 with 10,496 CUDA cores, 24GB of GDDR6X VRAM, and a 350W TGP. Buying one in September 2022 means buying it two years late and at the tail end of the worst GPU shortage in recent memory — crypto miners and scalpers kept 30-series pricing well above MSRP for most of its life, and it took the Ethereum mining crash earlier this year to finally bring prices down to something resembling sane.

The Review

Even two years on, this is still an enormous amount of GPU. The 24GB of VRAM is honestly overkill for most gaming, but it means genuinely comfortable headroom for 4K and even 8K with DLSS, plus real utility for anything creative or productivity-related that actually uses that pool. At 4K it demolishes basically everything I’ve thrown at it, and the cooler manages to keep noise reasonable given the performance tier it’s competing in.

None of that changes the fact that this is a genuinely poor value proposition if you’re gaming at 1080p or 1440p — the gap over the cheaper RTX 3080 barely shows up at those resolutions. The 350W power draw meant a PSU upgrade was non-negotiable, and the dual/triple-slot cooler is a hard no for any small-form-factor build. Buying it two years after launch, well past the shortage’s worst point, is really the only way this purchase makes financial sense at all.

What I Liked

  • Still the fastest consumer GPU available to me at 4K and beyond
  • 24GB VRAM gives genuinely comfortable headroom for demanding workloads
  • Cooling keeps noise reasonable for the performance tier
  • Bought well after the worst of the shortage-era pricing finally cooled off

What I Didn’t

  • Poor value at 1080p/1440p — only really makes sense at 4K and up
  • 350W power draw forced a PSU upgrade
  • Massive cooler rules out small-form-factor builds entirely
  • Two years late to the party by the time I actually got one

The Verdict

Rating: 4/5

Genuinely excellent at 4K, and only worth it now that the shortage-era pricing has finally settled down.

Where to Buy