Four Months With Lootcrate Subscription Boxes

Lootcrate is a subscription box service that sends a monthly box of geeky goodies right to your door. Several Lootcrate options are available including the original Lootcrate, which has a different theme each month, Lootcrate DX, which contains more premium items, and a number of themed Lootcrates including gaming, anime, and many fandom-specific crates. My family spent several months receiving original Lootcrates and a J.K. Rowling’s Wizarding World crate.

Original Lootcrate

All the original Lootcrates we received contained consistently high-quality items. Over the months we received clothing, including a tee shirt in every crate, socks, and a beanie hat. The shirts were all accurate to the size I had provided when setting up the subscription. There were many exclusive items including an X-Files card game, Star Wars Adventures graphic novel, and several figurines. Every Lootcrate also included a unique pin badge and some of the boxes themselves could be unfolded to create an additional item, such as Thor’s hammer Mjolnir.

J.K. Rowling’s Wizarding World Lootcrate

The J.K. Rowling’s Wizarding World Lootcrate was a significantly larger box than the original Lootcrates, however, I found that this did not equate to significantly more items inside. These crates contain items from both the Harry Potter and Fantastic Beasts franchises. The crate we received contained a Gryffindor scarf, a MACUSA stationery set, a Slytherin’s locket pin badge, a set of four erasers shaped like Honeydukes treats, and a pen shaped like Harry’s wand. The box itself could be converted into a Hogwarts trunk by flipping it inside out.

Our Thoughts

There have been some great items included in our Lootcrates. I couldn’t wait to read the Star Wars Adventures graphic novel, I wear my Ghostbusters tee shirt regularly, and I very much enjoyed playing the X-Files mini card game. However, there were so many other items included that nobody in my family had any interest in. Over four boxes, there were only two items that I would have personally chosen to go out and buy. Three of the four tees remain unworn, many figurines are still in their boxes, and the comics and calendars are still sealed because they are all from fandoms none of us participate in, or at least not enough to decorate our already cluttered home with their merchandise. This means that every month I had to spend time asking friends if they wanted things and arranging to pass them along in order to de-clutter—it felt like yet another chore being added to my already overly long list.

The themed boxes are different because, naturally, they only include items for a pre-selected fandom, so there are no random items from fandoms you’ve never heard of sneaking in. Even then, however, I doubt I would have chosen to buy any of the items we received myself, except perhaps the scarf. I already owned a replica Slytherin locket, and I had no need of additional stationery. Sadly, the wand pen broke within a few hours of being used at a Harry Potter quiz night.

In the future, I would consider ordering a themed crate on occasion, particularly if a fandom was added to the list that I have a huge interest in, and I do believe that these would make excellent gifts—especially for distant friends and relatives—but ultimately, my experiences did not make me want to go out and sign up to Lootcrate myself. The content of the boxes was very much hit and miss, and while there were some spectacular hits, there were far too many misses leading to lots of unwanted stuff in my house at a time when we are trying to think about minimizing how much unnecessary “stuff” we acquire.

For those with many and varied interests within geek culture, there might be enough every month to warrant a subscription, but for anyone with more niche interests, you might find yourself giving away more than you keep.

GeekMom received a subscription to Lootcrate for review purposes.

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