From the date of my 23rd birthday, I began a new obsession; collecting Funko Pop Figurines. It’s mad; whenever I see a figurine from something I enjoy, I have to get it. While I try to be careful not to go too overboard with buying so many, I often couldn’t resist temptation! From Marvel, to Harry Potter, to Disney, to WWE, I have all sorts of Funko Pops!

Nothing particularly unusual about this took place, until about midway through the first lockdown in 2020. At the time, I had moved back to Monaghan with my family. The only places to shop in town were Tesco and SuperValu. One day, I was browsing through the aisles and saw Funko Pop figures based on the latest Pixar movie, Onward. I’d liked the movie, so I decided to buy one of them for the time being.

The next day, I had my new Funko Pop on my bedside table and I was tidying my room. The usual scratching on my door caught my attention and so I let Murphy in so he could lie on my bed. Or at least that’s what I thought he was going to do.

Instead, Murphy started sniffing around my bedside table. I didn’t know what he was looking for. All of a sudden, he leapt up and began pushing his nose against my Ian Lightfoot (voiced by Tom Holland) figurine. He knocked it over and tried to pick it up. I was shocked, I didn’t expect this to happen! When Murphy grabbed the figure and jumped onto my bed to chew it up, I immediately pulled it away. I tried to stow it away on a higher shelf but that made Murphy’s interest even worse. He did everything to try to jump up and grab it. He even started crying for it, which made me feel extremely guilty.

I was not about to allow Murphy to chew up poor Ian Lightfoot, so I did the only thing that I felt was the right thing to do. A few days after that incident, I went to Tesco with my mother and bought another one specially for Murphy! It solved two things – he had his figure to chew up and he would stop wanting mine!

As the days passed, Murphy worked his way around the figure. He started with its big blue head, then to its arms and finally the tiny feet. Because I was the one who bought him the figure, I had to be the one to clear up after him! I gathered up the remnants of poor Ian Lightfoot and brought him to his final resting place in the dustbin. Although he hasn’t had another Funko Pop obsession since then, if he’s good, I promised Murphy I’d buy him another one.

To this day, I still don’t know what caused Murphy to become so obsessed with that Funko Pop. It could have been the color (blue), or maybe this particular figure had a certain smell that Murphy liked and he wanted to check it out for himself.

Either that, or he just really likes Tom Holland!