A Week Into the Trend and It’s Already Dead

The AI action figure thing started making the rounds in early April.

Twelve days later, it’s everywhere.
And nowhere interesting.

What began as a fun way to turn yourself into a boxed-up, plastic-faced parody has already been recycled, repackaged, and worn out. It’s on LinkedIn. It’s on brand decks. It’s in your inbox from that agency you didn’t ask to hear from.

It took less than two weeks to go from “this is clever” to “please make it stop.”

Fast ideas aren’t always good ideas.

We’re not against trends. We’re against jumping on them without asking why.
When the same AI image shows up in the feed 50 times with a slightly different caption, that’s not marketing – it’s mimicry.

Same format. Same tone. Same box.
Only now, everyone’s inside it.

We’re not here for the bandwagon.

At Apparatus, we don’t chase trends. We dissect them.
Sometimes we join in – most times we don’t. Because when everyone’s making the same thing, we’re already looking for what’s next.

Trends can be tools.
But if you’re not saying something new with them, you’re just part of the noise.

So no, we’re not making ChatGPT action figures.
We’re not here to play plastic.