- - Loot Crate | "Warriors" | February 2014 Review - -

Happy Thursday!

I've got another Loot Crate to show you today! As I have now noticed, the theme of a given box is announced at the beginning of each month. This time around the theme was "Warriors" and Loot Crate let us know ahead of time that the February box would be containing a shirt. 

To go along with the theme, many of the contents were Bravest Warriors-related items. I'm just going to come out and say this right now - I am not really familiar with Bravest Warriors. I'm definitely going to have to check it out sometime, but at this point I feel like I didn't get as much out of this box as I would have if I were a fan.

Nonetheless, please join me in checking out this month's goodies...

 

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What is Loot Crate?
Loot Crate is a subscription service that provides you with 6-8 geek/gamer goodies (shirts, stickers, gadgets) that are carefully curated around a unique theme each month.

Frequency: monthly
Monthly Cost: U.S. - $13.37 + $6 S&H
                                 Canada/U.K./Australia - $29.95 (S&H included)
Ships: 20th of every month
Products: 6-8 items
Discount Code: use LOOT2014 or TITAN (applies for the March box) to receive $3 off any subscription 

Previous Loot Crates: December 2013, January 2014

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I'm really impressed with how quickly the Loot Crate came in this month. I got the tracking information on February 19th and the package arrived at Andrew's doorstep on February 24th - that's less than a week!
 

First peek.

Catalogue describing this month's goodies and other cool stuff.

* All the prices are in US dollars. *

1 || Alpha Battle T-Shirt (Shirt Woot! & jamescho84) || $15 
        (Link to product)

What can I say? It's a great shirt with an awesome design! From what I've heard, Andrew has received a number of compliments on it so far - even one from his banker!

I've enlarged the photo so that you can carefully look at each character/game - how many can you recognize? :)


2 || Bravest Warriors Bow Tie (Frederator & Black Tie Geek) || ~$15
         (Link to product)

Since the Black Tie Geek website isn't up yet, it's difficult to figure out the exact value of this bow tie. I checked eBay and was completely surprised that people are willing to purchase this tie for $20, $31 ... even $47! Is it really worth that much? Especially this specific style?

I think that the bottom line with this bow tie is that despite looking really cool, it ultimately has very little practical value because, sadly, I don't see Andrew wearing this to any kind of event.

3 || GPS Cinch Bag (Frederator & Loot Crate Labs) || $5

"Gas Powered Stick" is a Bravest Warriors reference - it's the name of episode 7 in season 1 (hurray, I know this much now!). Andrew said that he was going to use this bag when he goes to play basketball, so I'm glad that he'll get a lot of use out of it.

4 || Dunny Sideshow Figurine (Kidrobot) || $9.95
        (Links to product: where to buy | Kidrobot)

This is a pretty neat collectible! These unique-looking figurines are basically designer toys. One interesting thing about this particular 2013 series is that the 20 available figurines were created by 14 artists, each of whom put their own spin on the intriguing characters.

I'm hoping there will be more of these in the coming boxes, so that Andrew and I can start a small collection. Come to think of it, these collectibles sort of remind me of the Pop! figurines (remember the Superman in the last Loot Crate?) - in the sense that there are so many to collect! 

5 || Bacon Love Card (OpenMe) || $4
        (Links to product: Bacon card | OpenMe)

 

Aww...nothing like "I love you more than bacon" to let that special someone in your life know how you feel. :) This has been the only Valentine's Day-themed item in this box. 

If you're ever in the mood for sending someone a card, there is an incredible amount of cards that you can customize on the OpenMe website. From what I understand, if you want to email your card to someone - it's free, but if you want to send a physical copy of your card - it costs $4.

6 || Bravest Warriors Digital Comic (Comixology  & Kaboom!) || $1.99
         (Link to product)

I haven't had a chance to check it out yet, but this is definitely the item for me rather than Andrew because I'm all about comic books and graphic novels.

7 || Bravest Warriors Sticker (Just Toys Int. & Frederator) || $1?

Stickers are always welcome because they're awesome.

Monthly Collectible Badge (Loot Crate) || February 2014 || Priceless

This badge is ridiculously adorable.

Now Andrew and I have a little collection of two badges:

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Thoughts

It's funny - I always feel like I appreciate the contents of a box more after I finish a thorough review of them. When we received this box, Andrew and I both felt like it wasn't our favourite out of the three we have. Now, I actually think I like it a lot more than I did initially. The shirt and the badge are definitely my favourites this month. Speaking of shirts, I'm pretty excited for the March Loot Crate because the theme is "Titan" and there is supposed to be another shirt!

In terms of value, the contents of this box came out to roughly $52.

Coming away from this review, I realize that it's kind of difficult to transition from beauty subscriptions to a box like the Loot Crate. I'll explain to you what I mean. First off, Loot Crate is really unlike any other box that I subscribe to (with the exception of maybe the Mystery Tackle Box - but that box is meant entirely for Andrew and we've only tried out one so far). 

One of the main features of beauty boxes that's important to me is how practical the items are that I get every month. With the Loot Crate, it isn't necessarily practicality that's important to evaluate in these boxes - and I've only come to realize this now. You're not signing up for practicality when you subscribe to Loot Crate (although it's awesome if you can incorporate items into your daily life); rather, you're signing up to receive a whole bunch of cool stuff like: incredibly unique shirts, collectible figurines, stickers, and knick-knacks here and there.

At the same time, I do experience conflicting feelings because I want to receive items with a purpose rather than something that can just collect dust on a shelf.

Haha, I don't know. All I can say is that I do enjoy getting the Loot Crates because you can never predict what's going to be in them. Plus, it's something that Andrew and I can bond over - and if THAT isn't enough of a purpose, then I certainly don't know what is.

Thanks for reading! -A.~