- Monday, July 20, 2015 11:13 AM
- DisneyDan
Hello everyone,
Recently I discovered that a company called Crate Joy offered a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TMNT) version of the latest merchandise collector craze more commonly known as Loot Crate. While Loot Crate is an actual company that sends out its own crates, numerous other companies have started up doing similar boxes, and I guess by default, people tend to just generalise them all as Loot Crate.
If you're not familiar with this concept, it basically is a subscription service that sends out a box of themed merchandise monthly or every other month. Themes, contents and prices can vary, but there are quite a wide range of them out there now. Jon and I also subscribe to the Marvel one. We already had our first box a while back, and are waiting for our second one any time now (I'll be sure to review that when it comes, too).
The TMNT subscription is called TMNT Box, and costs around $20 (US) per month, plus postage. There are a couple of different subscription offers, including paying for three, six or twelve months in advance, which lowers the average cost.
When you subscribe you have to choose clothing sizes, as sometimes you can be sent things such as t-shirts and socks. You also have the option of subscribing for yourself or sending it as a gift. I must stress that if you subscribe for yourself, there are personalised items that will arrive that will have your name on! I'll talk about it in more detail below, but basically Jon set up our subscription, and although it doesn't matter too much, it was more for me than him - when our first box arrived, one item had his name on it! The problem is that they don't warn you this could happen. I imagine many parents have subscribed for their kids only to have their box arrive with their own name on everything. We went into our online account and changed the account holder name, so hopefully next time we get a personalised item, it will have my name on it.
There is one further option when you subscribe, too. You can choose whether to have a "Classic", "Modern" or a "Combo" box. Classic boxes feature merchandise from the classic 1987 TV show, modern covers the current 2012 show, and a combo box is, unsurprisingly, a mix of both. I personally opted for the classic box.
My first box arrived on Saturday. When it arrived I was a little disappointed that the box was quite crushed and battered around. I'm not sure if that's just how it was, or if the mail service had treated it badly, but nonetheless, I was concerned that the contents had been damaged.
Once I opened the box, I discovered everything just loosely rattling around inside. Packing with a little more care would have been nicer. The contents of the box were not damaged however. Inside was a t-shirt, a pair of socks, a lanyard, an eye mask, a candy lollipop ring, and a flashlight.
The t-shirt is not bad. On its own it would have no doubt cost around $20, which is nearly as much as the whole box cost me.
The socks, again, not bad. Probably would have cost around $5 at somewhere like Target or Hot Topic, pushing the box value up further.
The lanyard is nice. It has a plastic holder for cards or ID, etc, and has a dangly pizza attached to it. The actual lanyard has a different design on each side. Again, not a bad item to receive, and would have probably cost at least around $5 in a store. So far the value of our box is up to about $30, and I only paid around $24 including postage.
The flashlight is a good idea, and has a keychain attached. Not bad, however, there was a sticker on the box saying they had personalised it with my name - except it wasn't my name, because they never asked for the box owner's name - it is in Jon's name. Also, I question the quality of this personalisation. Honestly, it would have been better had they not engraved it.
Then we come to the eye mask. I'm not sure what I am meant to do with this to be honest. They know this was an adult box, because we selected adult sizes for the clothing items - which arrived correctly as per the order. So what am I meant to do with this?
Finally we come to the lollipop. Again with this being an adult order. Aside from the fact it's a lollipop, it is also of the wrong style. I ordered the classic box - this lollipop is the modern style.
Overall I would give this box 3 out of 5. There were some good items that definitely were worth more than I had paid for the box, but the eye mask and the lollipop are pointless. The flashlight would have been good had they got the correct name, or just not bothered engraving it at all.
I look forward to seeing what comes in next month's box!
Dan.