Mailbox Invaders - My First FLEGO

They go by different nicknames like FLEGO (fake LEGO) or BootLEGO, but no matter what you call them, they're a good way to get favorite characters in the LEGO minifig scale that you might not otherwise be able to get.

I've seen blogging buddies post about them over the years and have even spotted some at local conventions. Something about them always looked off to me, a lot of them seemed extra shiny. So I held off on getting any for myself until now. A couple weeks ago Bubbashelby posted a Freakazoid minifig on Instagram and I had to have him.

That white line above his waist on the front and back is not a trick of the light. These figures come polybagged and mostly disassembled. I somehow ended up trying to put the waist piece into the torso the wrong way and it warped the plastic causing that little line. I'll probably get a replacement since the figs I got were only $2 each! I also need to get a pair of white hands to make him more accurate since these are more Caucasian skin color.

Since the figures were so cheap, I decided to find a few more. I found these all from eBay seller Susan-Chan89 and spent a good 10 minutes looking through all their auctions because they have so many minifigs available! You can try to get a bargain by bidding on auctions but with a $2 buy it now price, I don't think you can go wrong.

I have no idea who this dude is or why he's toting a tommy gun. He kinda reminds me of Dormammu from Doctor Strange comics. The main reason I picked him up is for the fiery translucent pumpkin head. I shot him at an up angle so you can't really see just how big the flame effect is. I'm thinking I'll use the head at some point for a custom Headless Horseman.

As much as I enjoyed Tessa Thompson's Valkyrie in Thor: Ragnarok, I was super happy to find this comic version of the character. For some reason, she has what look like tattoos on her arms. Not sure why the person making these went with that choice but like Freakazoid's gloves, they're easily replaced and I have to find a blue cape for her.
 

Another thing that shocked me with some of these is that the torsos are printed on front and back which is something LEGO itself only started doing in recent years. I wouldn't expect a knockoff product to put more than minimal effort into things. And just look at those cute little skull knee guards she has! Her hair looks odd from the front but she does have twin braids in the back.

And I just could not pass up this last one...

Granted, he looks a bit strange in LEGO form with the nub on top but he's pretty great. He also came with an alternate pumpkin head that I don't think looks quite right on this body. But now I've got a mini Jack Skellington to party with all my other spooky LEGO minifigs.

These figures are definitely worth the $2 (free shipping!). You can tell the plastic isn't the same quality as real LEGO but they'll look great with your other minifigs.

How I Nearly Got Cyber Swindled

A few weeks ago, an ad came up on my Facebook feed for "The Hunt For The Force Mystery Box" from Sports Collectors Warehouse (hereafter SCW).

What Star Wars fan wouldn't at least follow the link to see what it was all about? With the success of Loot Crate and other blind subscription boxes, online retailers have been selling blind boxes of collectibles so I presumed this was another one of those.

Here is basically what I found. I kind of Frankenstien'd a couple of screen grabs from the page but I have not changed anything. If you want to view the actual page, click here.

Maybe some "if it sounds too good to be true" alarms should have been going off but, again, I've been seeing legit sites sell mystery boxes. While I wasn't expecting to be a lucky person getting anything vintage or especially rare, I thought I would at least get a box of assorted Star Wars goodies that was equal in value to the cost.

After about a week, I get a shipping notice and being very eager to get my mystery goodies, sign up to get tracking updates every step of the way.  I actually do this pretty frequently when getting things delivered. I like the anticipation of seeing where the package is. 

Fast forward to the day it gets delivered. I get the tracking update while I'm at work and oh boy, I can't wait to get home!

I opened the box and pulled out a black ziploc bag. What could it be?

"Are you f'n kidding me?" (almost my exact words)
Two items with a current retail value of under $10?!?
One of which wasn't even in a sealed package!

I. Was. FURIOUS.

After calming down a bit, I went to the interwebs and googled the company name. Imagine my surprise when I found a Facebook group called Sport Collectors Warehouse Scam Victims. Looking through the posts, I saw several others posting photos of their lackluster box contents.

Some had toys similar to what I got. Some got a single comic book, and not even a Star Wars one,  I'm talking Daredevil and Alpha Flight! Others got loose figures that were in plastic bags with another store's card attached to them! Nothing I saw, outside of the comics, was older than 1999. Several of the group members had already tried to contact the store by email and phone. Many had already called their credit card companies to report fraud and/or request a new credit card.

Someone joined the group to show off a 1978 original, boxed 12" Vader figure he supposedly received. Some of the group members checked his FB profile and found he might be somehow related to the store that sold the boxes. He got booted.

Within another 24 hours, a message was posted on the SCW website.

 I shot off an email quicker than Han in a quick draw contest, as did everyone else in the group. Inside of a few hours, we got email refund notifications. Over the weekend, people started seeing the funds go back into their accounts (including shipping!) and they told us to keep the junk they sent us.

While nicely worded, their final message certainly feels like so much smoke and mirrors damage control to appease the collectors and fans they mistakenly angered. The creator of the FB group changed the name to SCW Unhappy Collectors. Now we have a small Star Wars collector group that shared this nasty experience. We've been sharing photos of our collections and doing things that geeks do, so I guess something good came from all this.

Foldio Foldable Studio

If you like taking photos, you've probably heard of Photojojo, and if not, you're welcome! They have all kinds of neat-o gadgets for your camera and cell phone to help with your image capturing. They also have a fun blog/newsletter with plenty of tips to help get your creativity going in new directions.

In a recent newsletter, they talked about the product of a successful Kickstarter from last year called Foldio. Foldio is basically a portable light box. It seemed like it would be worth the $50 to check it out, especially if it means not having to setup my "photo area" in the basement.

As an added bonus, Photojojo sent a free dinosaur!

Now that the prehistoric fun is out of the way, let's take a look at Foldio!
Foldio ships in a box almost the size of a record.

It comes with a snazzy mesh slip case (left) for traveling. And that's it on the right in its folded-down compact mode.



It's a pretty genius design. Each flap has a magnet in it. You unfold the flaps and connect the magnets to make the 10.2" cube, like so. The instructions that came with it warn against folding it back and forth, as this is an "incorrect and abusive use" which is not covered by the exchange policy. I can only presume they mean excessive folding because folding it
 back and forth is kinda how it works!

There's also an LED strip under the top flap. All the copy I read about Foldio called it "built-in" or "internally-embedded." I don't know if it normally comes attached but mine was not attached. Luckily, the back of it is sticky so I was able to attach it without having to use tape or anything. Also I'm presuming it's supposed to be attached because they don't mention where to attach it in the instructions.

I emailed Orange Monkie thorough their site and they sent me a couple of 15 second videos showing how to use a lighter to partially melt the sticky stuff to make it stick and where to place it. The latter one was not very helpful, but it ain't rocket science.

They were smart enough to ship it with the needed 9 volt battery (hurray!) but mine did not work (boo!). After plugging in the battery, you can slap it on to the magnet (below).



Here it is with one of the backdrop inserts. If you look at the top of the black, you can see the little tabs that will hold the backdrop in. You get three different colors: black, white, and gray. They're made of some type of soft foam board and smell very strongly like a new pair of shoes when you get them out of their plastic bag. They even tell you in the instructions, this is a normal smell and will fade over time. Because who wants to be feel like they're taking photos inside someone's shoe forever?

And that's it! It's very easy to setup, which means you can pretty much use it anywhere without having to worry about what's in the background of your shot. What's that? Sample pics, you say? I'm glad you asked!



Here is where you can kind of see the down side of the foam backdrop, at least the darker ones. You have to run your hand over it to make sure the color is even of you get results like this. Maybe you won't notice it much, but I do. The good news is, dollar stores sell poster size sheets of construction paper in a multitude of colors. Those are actually what I've been using for most of the photos that show up on here. It will be no problem to cut them down to size.



One other weird thing is the lighting. Because it's a strip of LEDs, they can cast multiple shadows, like Finn's sword here. I will admit, this could just be me needing to learn how to use it. I've taken less than 10 photos with it. Even if it hadn't come with the LEDs, and were cheaper, it would still be a handy lightbox I could use with the lamps I have.



The early verdict on Foldio is thumbs up! If you're someone that shoots a lot of smaller things or just get annoyed with your lighting making your subject shiny, it may be worth your time. I'm looking forward to using it more and being able to pop it up without needing to clear a spot, get the lamps out and fuss with their angles.

If you follow this link to the Photojojo store, you can save $5 on anything you order!

Summer Swap 2015

To paraphrase Picasso, "Good bloggers copy, great bloggers steal." In honor of this, I'm stealing an idea from the Retroist/I See Robots where they had a "Junk Box" that made its way around the country. I signed up for it twice and the box never made its way to me. The point of this sad tale is that I have stuff that I've been picking up that would have been sent to someone out in the blogsphere and that stuff is still sitting around along with several months worth of Loot Crate loot that's just collecting dust.

So the question that came to me is: "Why am I keeping this stuff?" 

The answer is "I have no idea!" but that's great for you!

What I'm doing is putting the call out to fellow pop culture nerds, bloggers, toy geeks, and all around cool people that want to swap their dust collecting stuff for different stuff. In short, if you're reading this, you're the intended audience! Funny how that works.

So what exactly am I going on about?

Summer Swap 2015 or #SummerSwap2015 as it shall be known!

If you've got a better name, I'm open to suggestions.

How's it work?

I'll start it off with a Large Flat Rate Priority Box packed with stuff. That box will get mailed to the first person. They'll take some stuff out of the box and put some of their stuff in and send it on to the next person. Rinse and repeat until everyone on the list has gotten the box and it comes back to me. You can use a new large flat rate priority box if the original is too beat up but I think it'd be cool if it looked like a suitcase from an old movie with people decorating it with doodles, stickers, or what have you.

When does it start?

Either after 10 people sign up or several days go by without a new sign up but I'd like to get at least 5 people.

What can I send?

Whatever you want that fits in the box! Trading cards, magazines, comics, figures, books, oddities, pretty much anything you think someone else might enjoy. Or whatever stuff you're tired of looking at and want to get out of your house!

Who can join in?

I'd say anyone, but there's a catch. Because we're sending a box full of goodies, I want to make sure it gets to all intended destinations, so there's some trust involved. If you're someone that's done mail exchanges with me before or if you're someone I consider in my Circle of the Blogosphere, you're good. If you don't fit either of those, maybe you know someone that is and they can vouch for you or I'll figure something out.

What do I need to participate?

Some stuff to donate to the cause

$18, the cost of shipping the box 

Good communication skillz! You'll need to check in with me when you get the box as well as when you send it and provide your tracking number.

What do I do when I get the box?

Open it! Bask in the glory of surprise stuff!

Also, it'd be really cool if you could shoot a couple photos of what you scored and what you're putting in. It doesn't need to be a full blown post if you don't want, Instagram works too. Send me a link to your post and I'll post it here, tweet it and basically get it out there. Take a shot of the mascot with your collection, at a favorite eatery, or a local landmark. 

Have fun with it! 

The Mascot

Currently, these guys are vying for the coveted spot of Summer Swap 2015 Mascot. They'll travel in the box to your home. Who do you want hanging out with you and your collection?

How do I sign up?

Sign ups are now closed but you can keep up with Summer Swap 2015 by clicking on it on the right under topics.

Dino Drac Funpack - October 2014

I'm just going to presume anyone reading this knows who Matt/Dinosaur Dracula is and not fanboy all over him. I decided to pull the trigger on his October Fun Pack because Halloween!

In case you're an unfortunate soul that didn't snag one, here's what you missed.
I apologize in advance for the busy background. I thought this table cloth would add some good holiday vibes to the photos but I think sometimes, it takes away from the focus.

I haven't even unpacked the box yet and I already feel like I got my money's worth upon taking in that gorgeous Nightmare on Elm Street sticker book. I definitely had one of those as a kid. OK, kid may be stretching it a bit as I was in my late teens when it came out.

Let's dive right in!



Matt includes a list of what's in the box as well as an October checklist of eerie things to do to get you in the holiday spirit. The Budweiser sticker is pretty neat, incorporating the sideways hourglass logo into the bat design. Glow sticks are a staple of Halloween and this one even says Halloween on it! What I really like about it are the package graphics. The glowy eyed ghoul emerging from its coffin with red-tipped claws is awesome.

Tucked in the upper right of the box is a pumpkin shaped goodie bag with a ghostly doodle attached. In the bag were some candy skeleton parts which did not last long. Hopefully they were from a more recent date than everything else! There's a vintage Stripe sticker card from Gremlins. On top of that is a teeny tiny Pepsi can necklace, which I remember getting a few of as vending machine prizes. And last is a pocket book about "Real" Monsters. None of those fictional creatures in here! I loved books like this as a kid. I was big into spy stuff so anything like this that was of a smaller size was instantly interesting. Add in monsters, and it's home run, out of the park cool.



Next is a McDonald's promotional ad for Halloween gift certificates featuring Roger Rabbit (now on VHS!). As with a lot of things in here, I am amazed that he not only has these relics but that he has enough of them to pack one for everyone that got this Fun Pack!



Here's mini-poster celebrating the Dino Drac 2014 Halloween Countdown, a Mordle creature, and an official Dino Drac specimen. I'm actually pretty stoked about the specimen. I have an affinity for capsule toys and vintage vending things. Let's take a closer look.



The Monster Pop-A-Bead is hard to photograph because it's so small but you can see some of the detail here. I would have loved to have a few handfuls of these as a kid to make into horrific bracelets or necklaces.

Pop some Hypnocil, kids! We're going to Dreamland...



In addition to the Nightmare sticker book and a pack of stickers (where does he get this stuff?!?), he also included a pair of 3D glasses from Freddy's Dead. I still have my original pair and used them the last time I watched the DVD. The sticker book covers the first three movies. I guess maybe there was too much gore for each movie to have its own book.



Here's the full cover art in all its disturbing glory. As I held this childhood (again, go with me on the child part) relic in my hands and flipped through it, I started thinking about just how messed up the 80s were with marketing R rated properties to a young audience: Aliens, Predator, Robocop, Nightmare. Most of them had action figure lines. Some had trading cards or sticker books. All things generally targeted at kids! Weird.

Kristen hanging out with her friends

And that concludes your tour through the Dino Drac October 2014 Fun Pack. He still offers monthly Fun Packs as a monthly subscription service if you want to get in on the goodness.

Before you head off to your next house, swing by Halloween Mixes.
They're posting a themed mix album every day of the month!

And of course, check out all the other folks participating in the Countdown to Halloween!

Mailbox Invaders - Movies, Movies, Movies!!

So what seems like a very long time ago, but in reality was probably late March, I somehow found out about an incredible contest being hosted by Cult Movie Mania. Entry was about as easy as it gets: fill out a simple form on their website. The prize?

On February 10^th, 2014 we put $1,000 and three cult movies into the box you see below. Each week after that we will add another three cult movies until May 10^th, 2014. By the time May 10^th rolls around, there will be $1,000 and AT LEAST 36 movies in the box. Why do I say “at least 36 movies”? That’s because we may put more than three movies per week into the box, depending on how many people sign up. The more people who sign up, the more movies we’ll put in the box.

 Like most contests, I submitted my entry and totally forgot about it, because odds. 

Fast forward to May 10 when I get a tweet from Trash Man asking me if I just won the contest. So I check my email and there's the email that went out to all subscribers to Cult Movie Mania's mailing list announcing the winner.

Scroll down, scroll down, scroll down...

The winner is...

my name!

I let out some kind of exclamation from the couch which caused my wife some concern from another room. I showed her the email and we're both thinking there's no way, it must be someone else with my same name. A couple hours later I got a direct email from CMM confirming I did in fact win. Whoa!

I didn't actually count them, but according to the announcement, there were 47 movies spread out over DVD, BluRay and VHS(!) when all was said and done!

And that wasn't everything. There's also a t-shirt from the movie Brainjacked, a CD from ScreamerClauz, and the Ultimate Collector's Set of Herschell Gordon Lewis' The Uh-Oh Show. That is a prize in itself! It includes the movie, a making of DVD, 3 exclusive buttons and a set of 6 lobby cards. On top of all that, one of the lobby cards is signed by Lewis and has a piece of screen used costume and gore on it (upper right)!

 Needless to say, I've got a lot of cult movies in my future! There's some great stuff that I've seen before and a whole lot more that I've never heard of. I have to check if my VCR is still hooked up so I can watch "There's Something Following Me" which is set on Halloween.

A huuuuge thanks to the folks at Cult Movie Mania for holding this epic contest!

Please check out Cult Movie Mania's site where you can sign up for their mailing list.

You can also find them on Facebook and Twitter if you're into weirdness.

Mailbox Invaders - Garbage Pail Kids!

Just about a month ago, I entered the "March Badness" contest on The Ultimate Garbage Pail Kids Collection Facebook page. A couple weeks ago I found out I won second place! 

Second place consists of a base set of 2014 GPK Series 1 and a few extra goodies. Now, I haven't picked up any GPK since I used them to decorate my high school notebook so I was excited to check these out.

They sent along a few bonus stickers of the site's logo, a couple of the stickers from the Minikins and some really cool stickers to promote their web presence that are named like GPK characters.

While I've always liked GPK, the pop culture ones, of course, really piqued my interest. Here's a few of them showing off Adventure Time, Cthulhu, the Wizard of Oz and Gangnam Style! A couple other neat ones have Jaws and the mobile game Temple Run.



There's also a Winter Olym-Picks (as in nose) mini-series. The backs of these have info on the character's birthplace and background about them.



Just like the original cards, some of the backs are puzzle pieces to make a large version of one of the cards. Some of them also have comic strips or checklists. The only thing missing is the faint smell of a stick of crunchy bubblegum.

A big thanks to Matt for having this fun contest. If you're looking for info on anything and everything GPK related, be sure to visit GeePeeKay.com. He's got pics of every card (from his own collection, no less!) and a cool little feature where you can find out what GPK cards share your name. Sadly, there's not a really cool one for Dex...

Loot Crate - July 2013

If you've been with me awhile you might recall me blogging my very first Loot Crate back in April. And you may also recall how I said I signed up for three months and there being no follow up reviews. What can I say, I got lazy. It happens.

Despite that, somehow my one blog post got someone's attention over there and they offered me a chance to join their affiliate program. What does that mean? Each month they'll send me a crate in exchange for a review. I also get a bonus for those that sign up via my link and referral code. You can sign up, save 10% and help me out in the process. Everybody wins! If you might be interested in joining the affiliate program, contact me.

The theme for the August Loot Crate is going to be "Cake" because it's the one year anniversary crate. They've already announced it will include a shirt and promise it'll be full of surprises. Anyway, enough of the sales pitch...

The theme for July's Loot Crate was "Varsity". Probably one I would have passed on based on that word alone, but I would have been wrong. The Crate was mostly filled with things pertaining to the web series Video Game High School. I watched this back in January and definitely recommend it for gamers. You can watch it online here.

Starting us off is a pair of C-3P0 earbuds! I'll probably never use them but it's always cool to get some unexpected Star Wars kitsch. To compliment that, right below it, is a sticker of a Stormtrooper wearing a VGHS varsity jacket. Then we've got the Mighty Thor as a Pez dispenser and who doesn't love Pez? Anyone?

I haven't opened the Sonic air freshener yet. I don't know what "Sonic Breeze" smells like, but it sounds like what Sonic would call a fart. Below that is a sticker for Rocket Jump, the people that created VGHS. Ah, that takes me back to the many self-kills racked up while learning to perfect that move.

The first season of VGHS on DVD! I was pretty psyched to pull this out of the Crate. I'm looking forward to digging into the extras on it. As a geek that grew up alongside video games (not just grew up with), I really like what they did with it.

A set of five buttons, one for each school of gaming taught at VGHS. Even if I wasn't familiar with VGHS already, the retro-graphics on the buttons make them full of awesome.

And finally, for those times when your batteries are drained and there's no power outlet in sight, we have the VGHS emegency wireless keyboard! Portable, compact and it easily allows you to correct any typos on the spot!

I have to say, the last two Crates I got before this one were (to quote Randy Jackson) "just kinda ok for me." They each had an item or two that I was excited about but they were lacking in the overall joy that I felt when I opened my first one in April. Of course, that one was arcade/video game focused so it set the bar high for future installments.

The Varsity Crate is an all around good one though! The only thing that might have made it a better experience is if I wasn't already familiar with VGHS and was introduced to it with the included DVD set. There's nothing like that feeling when you find something rad on video that you never knew existed.

Disclaimer: As I said up near the start, Loot Crate has provided this Crate to me free of charge in exchange for my reviewing the product.

Mailbox Invaders - Retro-y Goodness

Recently, relatively new League of Extraordinary Bloggers member Trash Man over at Pop Pop! It's Trash Culture hosted a crazy giveaway or as he called it "free junk!" While the winner's circle was occupied by Goodwill Geek, TM (can I call ya TM?) was awesome enough to send out consolation prizes to all who entered the contest.

We didn't know we were getting anything until after the contest was over so that was a nice surprise! Come to find out, the two of us live in the same state not too far away so I'm probably the first one to get their consolation prize.

What I got was an envelope packed with "retro-y goodness"™

First, we got comics! Cap and The Defenders are from the 80s and the Tales book is from '77. Although it's a reprint, the cover and pencils were done by Gil Kane. The Defenders was always one of my favorite books because it had Doc Strange in it, added bonus: Scarlet Witch is in this ish! Cap's going at it with Anaconda on his cover. I've never really liked her.
I mean, how can you not call yourself Ana Conda?

Trading cards? We got those! I think they're all from the 80s, I'm not up on my GPK history. I'm going to tear these open but I ain't eatin the gum! Some of them will get recycled into the Random Box O Stuff that I grab from when I send to other bloggers. I'm most interested to see just how 3D the Jaws 3D cards are!

And I realized that I left out the what's probably the coolest, and smallest, part of the prize pack: a LEGO Series 1 Robot Minifig! I've actually had this guy on my want list for some time. Now I can finally have the good and evil robots fight each other.

A huge thanks to Trash Man! Be sure to swing by his blog and twitter: @ItsTrashCulture

Mailbox Invaders - Custom LEGO Halloween Scene

So I happened to be browsing Ebay a few weeks ago, as I'm wont to do, when I decided to look for LEGO Halloween stuff. If you've been around these parts for a bit, you know my LEGO minifig focus has mainly been contained to the monsterous/Halloween-ish ones. I found all sorts of interesting things from custom zombies to a Headless Horseman for sale. 

I will have a LEGO Horseman one day if I have to custom one up myself!

But what really caught my attention were a few auctions from seller jzieglemeier10. She puts together custom Halloween scenes and displays. One of the things I really like about what she's doing is that she isn't just doing the same sets over and over. It seems like each one is a little bit different even if it may be a similar idea behind the sets.

There were a few different sets but this is the one I decided to go for. There were no bids and only a few hours left. I don't have a skeleton in my monstorium yet and the witch is different from the one that was released in the blind bag minifig series. The starting price was about $10 which is really good just for 3 minifigs, never mind the scenery, spiders and pumpkins. But the whole reason I wanted this set is that guy right in the middle. 

I don't know why, but I have an affinity for pumpkin-headed people. Maybe it's loosely related to my love of the Headless Horseman, although I'm pretty sure Disney were the ones that gave him a flaming gourd for his noggin instead of the tale's original severed head. Anyway, he's ready to MC the festivities with his dapper top hat, suit jacket and bat staff.

I won't get into the boring details but I had a problem with the PO getting this to me. It was scanned in as "delivered" but I didn't receive it until a week later and the bubble mailer had been opened! Luckily, the seller packed it all well so nothing was missing. I opened a case on Ebay to let the seller know, called the PO, yadda yadda yadda. The seller was great and very responsive, which is why I'm mentioning her by name: jzieglemeier10.

I'd probably mention her anyway so other people can find some cool little Halloween LEGO that you can't get in the store but I had a very good experience with her during my situation and that's worth all the free publicity I can give! She's been collecting LEGO and Halloween related things for a number of years and decided to try her hand at putting them together. Also check out her Facebook page called Creative Primworks where she shows off her mostly Halloween handcrafted works.

Just 101 days til Halloween!

Mailbox Invaders - Boss Monster

I recently got my first Kickstarted physical game in the mail and wanted to show it off. 

It's got a perfect storm of things going on that made it a must buy for me:

 it's a card game, it's fantasy based and the 8-bit artwork.

The shiny gold Zelda-like box sleeve was one of the backer exclusive perks.

While I played a good amount of Nintendo back in the day, I know my experience is pretty sparse. I stuck mainly to Mario, Zelda and licensed games like Star Wars or Indiana Jones, so I don't have a lot of the nostalgia that most Nintendo players have for many of the fantasy games like Castlevania. Nope, never played a one!

I think Nintendo and D&D fans would like this game. There's a lot of sly winks to both.

I'm not going to go into too much detail of how the game is played, I mainly wanted to show some of the cards to give a general impression. You can read more on the Boss Monster site.

The premise of the game is a bit different from what you might expect. Instead of the intrepid adventurer questing for loot: you get to be the Boss Monster!

Zyzax's name is inspired by Gary Gygax, creator of D&D.

As a Boss Monster, your goal is to lure Heroes into your dungeon and collect 10 of their souls before they can do enough damage to kill you.

Take a closer look, you might recognize some of these Heroes!

You accomplish this by building dungeon rooms laden with traps and hungry monsters. Each room has one or more types of Hero specific treasure icons. The Heroes will be lured to the Boss Monster's dungeon with the most matching Treasure icons. The rooms all have something special to help you conquer the Heroes and the other Boss Monsters.

The Dark Lab art reminds me of a piece of fantasy artwork but I can't remember what it is.

And no devious Boss Monster's arsenal of tricks would be complete without some Spells to help overcome the greedy Heroes!

A few familiar faces?

I haven't had a chance to actually play it yet, but I'd say it's a safe bet that if you like the art and sense of humor that it's up your alley. They're currently working on the first expansion called Tools of Hero-Kind. They've also mentioned a standalone expansion, to be a future Kickstarter, code named Crash Landing which has something to do with aliens coming into the fantasy realm of Boss Monster.

I got some really neat-o things for being a backer, like holo-foil versions of the Boss Monster cards and gold  arcade inspired "level up" tokens. Even without those added goodies,
I think $25 is a great price for a boxed game with 148 cards.

Head over here to order and/or check out a gameplay video.

Mailbox Invaders - Loot Crate April 2013

I'd been wanting to check out the geek subscription service Loot Crate for awhile now. As part of my "spending celebration" for getting a job I plunked down for 3 months worth of deliveries. If you do more than 1 month at a time you end up saving money.

Each month's crate has a theme to it and when I saw April's was "token", as in arcade, I was in! Although I'm still sad I missed the Star Wars and Doctor Who Crates recently.

Here's what I ended up getting.

The Crate (after being opened)

After digging out the cool stuff, I noticed the bottom of the box...

I know, I know. You're screaming "What's in the box?!" like Brad Pitt by now...

• A couple pieces of "arcade candy."
• A Mushroom Kingdom cinch bag. The inventory card in the box tells me this bag was available as a prize at arcades that had sit down 1 vs 1 Mario Cart games.
• Street Fighter Guile Vs Bison keychain. The back has a move for each character.
• Street Fighter Blind Boxed Vinyl Figure by KidRobot. I got E Honda. I would have preferred almost any other character!
• A game token from 8-Bit Zombie
• And my favorite thing...

A Space Invaders cabinet candy tin! The LEGO aliens weren't included, but the candy inside is in the shape of our favorite pixelated predators. This will be going right next to my other cabinet tin for Pac-Man. I hope this company keeps making more. I want a mini-arcade!

The Verdict
Do I feel like it was worth what I spent? Absolutely! I was fairly certain I'd enjoy this month's delivery because of my love for classic video games and arcade culture. Plus, the experience of discovering what's in the box as you open it is a lot of fun. There's only a couple things I totally love in the box but the rest will probably find its way to other bloggers.

Will I keep subscribing? That's up in the air. I'm still good for the next 2 months so we'll see.

I think what I'd prefer is to have a subscription but then being able to opt in when you find out the theme. For example, I still have 2 months left and I could pass or use 1 month when the theme is announced so that I could save it for something I know I'll really like.

So, if you think you might want to check out Loot Crate, head over to their site using this link and if enough of you sign up, I get a free Crate. Everybody wins! You can also scope out the site and see what goodies were shipped in previous months to help you decide.

You definitely get value for your coin, it's just a question of will you like what you get?