The Funko Pop Summary: Where Biography Meets Box Art
- Dustin Rimmey
- 17 hours ago
- 5 min read
Let me tell you something about my office.
It is covered in Funko Pops. Floor to ceiling, shelf to shelf, every available surface. I have lost count of how many I own, but the number is somewhere north of embarrassing and south of intervention. My classroom alone has roughly thirty of them staring at my students every single day — a silent, big-eyed audience for every lesson I teach.
And here's the part that gets me every time.
Over the years, several of my graduating students have brought me a Funko Pop on their way out the door. Not a card. Not a gift card. A Funko Pop. Chosen specifically for me, wrapped up, handed over with the kind of quiet sincerity that makes you remember exactly why you became a teacher.
They know me. And they showed it the way I would have (I gift people Funko Pops based on their interests... it's my love language).
So when I tell you that the Funko Pop Summary Activity is one of my favorite things I've done in my classroom, I want you to understand that this isn't a random edtech idea I stumbled upon. This is a person who is genuinely, unironically, perhaps pathologically obsessed with Funko Pops, who one day looked at his collection and thought:
Wait. What if my students had to make one of these?
If you've been around the plAIground for a while, you might remember a post I wrote back in 2024 after reading Quinn Rollins' Play Like a Pirate a book I described, with full sincerity, as the book I wish I had written. In that post, I explored how action figure packaging could be used as a mastery check and shared some early student examples from my AP Government courses. If you missed it, go read it. I'll wait.
Today's post is the evolution of that idea. Same DNA, upgraded engine. Since that post, I've refined the activity, run it across more subjects, and added something that more intentionally in(ex)cludes the use of generative AI.
What Is the Activity?
Here's the premise: students are tasked with designing the official Funko Pop for a key figure or concept from your unit. That means two deliverables.
First, the box. Students design the packaging for their Funko Pop, and every single design choice has to mean something. The color palette. The name on the box. The tagline. The series it belongs to. The accessories listed on the back. Nothing is arbitrary. Everything is biographical.
Second, the figure. Using Adobe Express or Canva's AI image generator, students prompt an AI tool to generate the actual figure that would live inside that box and then display it alongside their packaging.
That's it. That's the activity. It looks like an art project. It is absolutely not just an art project.
What's Actually Happening Cognitively
Here's what I love about this one, and why I keep coming back to it:
When a student has to decide what color to make Alexander Hamilton's box, they have to know something real about Alexander Hamilton. When they name their pop "The Architect" instead of just "James Madison," they've made an argument about legacy. When they list "Federalist Papers" as an accessory on the back of the box, they've demonstrated content mastery in eight words.
The design explanation is where the magic lives. After students finish their box, they have to justify their choices in writing or discussion. Why those colors? Why that name? Why that accessory and not a different one? What they say, or can't say, tells you everything about what they actually understood.
It's a mastery check wearing a very convincing costume.
How to Run It
The activity has two parts that can happen simultaneously or sequentially, depending on your setup.
The Box: Use the template linked below. Students fill in the key biographical or conceptual information through their design choices. Encourage them to think like a marketing team for their historical figure. What would sell this person to someone who had never heard of them? What is their most important contribution, and how do you put that on a box?
The Figure: Direct students to Adobe Express or Canva's AI image generator, whichever your school has access to, and have them prompt the AI to generate their Funko Pop figure. This is where the AI literacy piece comes in naturally and without force. Students have to describe their subject well enough that the AI can render it. Vague prompts produce vague figures. Specific, knowledgeable prompts produce something worth displaying.
That friction? That's the learning.
Where I've Used It
I've run this with presidents, the Framers of the Constitution, and famous economists, and it has worked every single time. But here's what I want you to hear: this activity is not tied to any content area or grade level. Consider what it could look like across subjects:
ELA: A Funko Pop for Jay Gatsby — box tagline: "The Dream Is the Product." Accessories: green light, yellow car, empty pool.
Science: A Funko Pop for Marie Curie — box series: "Radioactive Pioneers." Accessories: test tubes, Nobel Prize x2.
Math: A Funko Pop for Pythagoras — box name: "The Triangle Guy." Accessories: right angle, beans (look it up).
Social Studies: A Funko Pop for Harriet Tubman — box tagline: "Conductor." Accessories: North Star, map, freedom.
Any figure. Any concept. Any content area. If it has a story worth telling, it has a Funko Pop waiting to be designed.
The AI Piece
I want to be intentional about why AI belongs in this activity and not just tacked on for the sake of it.
Prompting an AI image generator to produce a Funko Pop figure requires students to translate their biographical knowledge into descriptive language. They have to think about what their subject looked like, what they wore, what objects would represent them, and how to communicate all of that clearly enough for a machine to render it. That is writing. That is synthesis. That is exactly the kind of human-in-the-loop thinking we want students practicing.
And honestly? Watching a student's face when the AI generates a surprisingly accurate Benjamin Franklin in Funko form is one of the best moments you'll have all year.
Grab the Template
Open it in Canva or Adobe Express, make a copy, and assign it. If you use it, I want to see what your students make. Tag me @justrimmey on X or @teachersplaiground on Instagram. I will reshare every single one.
Because honestly? I want to see your Funko Pops.
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