If you’ve at all been a part of gamer / geek culture over the past 7 years or so in any capacity you’ve no doubt heard of Loot Crate, one of the earliest of the now seemingly ubiquitous “random item box” subscription services.
Well, they are going bankrupt and, quite honestly, I feel no sadness over this. Yes, that reads quite cold, but seeing as I never really gave a care for the company or the service it provided that makes sense.
The idea behind Loot Crate is a simple one – you pay per month for a box to be sent to you containing various items, usually related to a particular theme, such as “Titan” or “Spider-Man” or “Anime”, that kind of setup. At face value a fine proposition, but things didn’t hold well for long.
I remember when it was new several YouTubers I like did videos on the monthly boxes. The boxes were the same for everyone, so if you watched one person open their box, you saw everyone do it, and over time incentive for many to do those videos ceased. This was fine by me though, but in seeing these I got a glimpse into just what was being offered for $20 a month and I have to say, I was not impressed.
While yes, the value was there, for the most part, the question quickly became since it was a themed mystery box, in effect, if you didn’t like the theme, or it was too broad a subject, well, you were going to get some real crap alongside maybe something interesting. If memory serves there was always a shirt in there, which was at least worth the price, sure, but for the other stuff? Eh, some I’d take but most I’d leave.
Then came the second hand market — people selling off stuff in the Loot Crate each month. As it would turn out, this made a great market to get the one thing you may really want for cheap. Hell, even locally I found some nice stuff, like Destiny themed character class patches, for next to nothing simply because a guy had them and didn’t want them.
Eventually, after a while, I stopped hearing about Loot Crate as often — I barely even saw it mentioned publicly. A multitude of other subscription box services came into being over the years fighting for people’s money each month, some of them sticking around and others dying off as quickly as they came to be. Thing is, many of these were more focused on specific subjects, types of items, what have you. Meal packages, shave and hair care kits, game boxes, what have you — if you can think of it, people came up with a box for it and as I said, some survived even to today, but others came and went in just a few months.
I’ve only ever had one Loot Crate product — it was a gift last year, a “best of the 80’s” Walmart special Loot Crate box with a Golden Girls mug, a Big Trouble in Little China comic book, a Back to the Future Part 2 figure of Marty on his Hoverboard, Some Ninja Turtles product I can’t recall, and one of those little nylon backpacks that looks like a Proton Pack from the series. Yeah, a mix of things that, well, stay in the box. That’s not to say I don’t like some of them, the Golden Girls mug is neat and the Back to the Future figure is nice, but I kind of prefer them stay in the box unused and undamaged – the rest is kind of whatever but quaint enough, I guess.
What I’m getting at is the random nature of things, and the fact that it really kind of was the companies undoing. People can only enjoy so much of this stuff, and eventually they either don’t want anymore items (or don’t have room) and stop with the boxes. Or, they have a bad month, get things they don’t like, and cancel their subscription — that was common too.
Then consider the actual mix of items for people who stuck around, and just the experience it presents — while you certainly might get a bunch of stuff you love, especially if you’re one of those “I like everything in geek culture” kind of people, but if you’re more particular about your interest, like me, well, you’re going to be bummed out. Inevitably enough people would get things they didn’t care for (as mentioned above) that customer interest dropped, as mentioned above — why spend 20 for who knows what when you can drop that on one item you know you want, or just buy the things from the box you may want down the road later from previous Loot Crates for next to nothing?
This, along with other poor management and inventory issues on both the supply and sales front resulted in some cases where boxes weren’t sent out to paying customers, and others where the company had too much inventory and had to sell the items cheaper down the line individually. At least, that’s what I’ve read as being the case but I wouldn’t doubt it!
Anyway, I’m beginning to go on far too long about this. My point is, the whole thing was, to me, always doomed. Like anything in pop culture, it comes and it goes. It doesn’t help that, as a company, Loot Crate stretched themselves way too far offering too many boxes (excessive market saturation) which meant too much of their resources got poured into things no one really wanted.
As for me, barring some shirts and some occasional cool figures, I never wanted any of it. I’d rather spend $20 a month on old computer junk, typewriters, games, or hell, just on a good mean, and me saying that I’d rather get an expensive dinner than random geeky crap is seriously saying something about my thoughts on Loot Crate. I just never saw it as providing a necessary or special service — it was the kind of stuff you could buy anywhere, save for the fact that much of it was “Loot Crate Exclusive” which it just a forced thing anyway — it’s not like the products could have never been made without Loot Crate’s involvement — artificial scarcity at its finest which, ironically, bit them in the ass in the end.
Goodbye, Loot Crate. I won’t miss you.