I love stuff. I especially love nerdy stuff. So a great deal of squee happened when my wife Heather told me a little more than a year ago that for my birthday present she was going to sign me up for Lootcrate, a monthly nerd subscription box. She signed me up again at Xmas, and a third six-month subscription was purchased at my last birthday. For those of you keeping track, my birthday is in mid-June, which is the perfect time for a birthday. It means your two main present-acquiring days are spaced out evenly in the year, but with Lootcrate, it’s the gift that keeps on giving. Once a month you open the mailbox to see that you got stuff!

I have gotten many things over the course of the last year-plus of Lootcrate boxes, and have been pretty happy with it thus far. Some boxes have been epic, others less so, but overall it’s been a good enough run that Heather decided to get her own subscription box, Cairn, which is an outdoorsy-stuff monthly box. We usually have little contests each month to see which of our boxes was the ‘winner’ for the month, much in the same way we might each taste each other’s food at a restaurant and decide who ordered the winning dish.

So it was a bit surprising when last month, out of the blue and for no apparent reason, my wife decided that one nerd box was just not enough, and that I would now be getting two. This made for more squee, and further evidence that my wife is the living embodiment of awesome. Now that I get both Lootcrate and September was my first month to receive Geek Fuel, naturally, I have decided that these two boxes will face off every month to see which box is the winner every month. And you get to watch.

Lootcrate

Lootcrate has a monthly theme, and the theme for this month was “Summon.” The box included the following.

Lootcrate1

The “big” item for the month was this adorable Pikachu hat. I mean come on. That picture is just five pounds of cute in a two pound sack. And I need to shave more often.

Lootcrate2

This is some sort of golden Homer Buddha statue.

Lootcrate3

This is a car from a show called Supernatural that I am told is named “Baby.” I gave the car to the gal who likes the show and knew what to call the car.

Lootcrate4

This is a Hearthstone stress squeeze thing. There was also a golden coin and a scratch-off code for a bonus pack for the game Hearthstone. I play World of Warcraft and also Magic the Gathering, and Hearthstone is a mash-up of those two concepts. Heather plays Hearthstone, so she happily used the code for the free pack.

There was one other feature for the Lootcrate this month: If you unfolded the box all your stuff was shipped in, and then re-folded it into a book-like form, you could then use the box as a platform to play a game on your phone. I dutifully put the box together, played the game through to its entirety. It used up about twenty minutes of time that I will never get back. I know a lot of people had to do a lot of work to get that game done, but it has absolutely zero replay-ability… and the first play through wasn’t very entertaining. It left me with a lot of “meh.”

 

Geek Fuel

There is not any sort of monthly theme for Geek Fuel, and since this was my first box I really didn’t have any expectations going into it. I have since done some research, and learned that you can expect an exclusive T-shirt included with every box. This is a good thing, as a lot of the best things I’ve gotten from Lootcrate have been the exclusive T-shirts, but they are a random thing and you never know which months will have them. With Geek Fuel, I know that every month my nerdy shirt collection will continue to grow. Wanna see the first one I got?

GF1

Ok. I will admit that I didn’t get it straight away. I had to do some digging through Dr. Internet to learn that this is a reference not just to those who wear Mandalorian armor in the Star Wars universe – Jango Fett, Boba Fett, and the oft-forgotten Jodo Kast – but is also a reference to a David Bowie album. The shirt alone had me excited, but the next item I pulled out was just as thrilling.

GF3

Now I can make TARDIS and Dalek ice cubes. And I have. And I will admit that when I dunk a few Dalek cubes into my glass of water I say in Dalek-voice “HYDRATE!”

GF4

This is a Geek Fuel exclusive comic, bagged and boarded, which also included a COA (Certificate of Authenticity).

GF5

Some may think that because these are nail wraps with various superhero masks on them that I would just hand these over to my wife for her to use. But I occasionally indulge in a bit of nail-painting myself, as evidenced by my own pinkie finger in that photo. So I think I will also be using these. I may let her have some too. She is the whole reason I got this box to begin with after all.

GF6

This item is a double-slap-bracelet. I think it must have been a bonus since this was my first box, as it is not listed among the items that were standard for the box. So, while it has some coolness factor to it, I will not be including it as I weigh out my verdict of which nerd box wins this month

While you wait for me to make my decision, here’s a cute pic of a tiny horse.

horse

And the winner is… Geek Fuel!

Geek Fuel emerges victorious in the Inaugural Nerd Box Battle! While I really dig the Pokemon hat from Lootcrate, that was really all that piqued my interest, and only because it’s cute. I have never played any Pokemon games, I don’t watch Supernatural, I don’t play Hearthstone, and while I dig The Simpsons, I haven’t watched the show in any kind of regularity since I was in high school, and thus have no frame of reference for this statue.

The Geek Fuel box wasn’t a total win either, as I haven’t seen any Bob’s Burgers, but I was able to take the comic to my local comic shop and get some store credit for it, so that’s lemonade out of lemons. But the shirt and the Doctor Who ice cube tray were both solid items for me, and the nail wraps are fun, so those are what pushed the Geek Fuel box to victory for September.

What will the future hold? Well, October’s Lootcrate theme has been announced and it’s “Time.” It looks like it will include items from Back to the Future, Doctor Who, and Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. All of which are franchises that I actually do like, so that could tilt the scales of next month’s battle. We shall just have to wait and see.

About the Author

Noah
NoahContributor/ Ninja
Noah Westerfield doesn’t own any David Bowie albums, the only Bowie songs he knows much of come from the movie Labyrinth…and he’s OK with that. You remind me of the babe…