Review: Brickbox Club
Posted by Huw,
It never ceases to amaze me how people find ways of making money from our hobby, whether it be buying and selling, building models professionally, writing books and magazines, renting out LEGO sets, running websites or YouTube channels, or creating 'loot box' subscription services.
Brickbox Club is one of the latter that launched in the USA earlier this year: pay a subscription fee then receive a box of goodies in the post every month. It's not the first LEGO related service like this to be started but it has one major advantage over other similar services that I am aware of: everything in the box is LEGO or LEGO-compatible. There's no filler clone brand rubbish that most of us would discard immediately.
I've been sent the September box to review, so read on to find out what's in it and whether it represents good value for money.
The package arrives in a sturdy 24 x 16cm cardboard box.
The contents are attractively wrapped in tissue paper.
Each month's box has a different theme: this month it's Ninja.
This is what's inside: 70753 Lava Falls, a series 5 Mixel, a 10cm tall giant Ninjago minifigure pen, a custom printed Ninja minifig, a bag of Ninja accessories, a 'no more dust on your minifigs' 4x4 Fabiox minifig case and a personalised keychain which I believe is sent out to new subscribers.
The keychain sent to me has Brickset printed on it which is pretty cool :-)
The ninja has a custom printed torso, head and arms, which are printed as well as any I have seen, and a hexagonal stand printed with the same snake symbol as the torso.
The accessory bag contains the skirt, hood and a second sword (please excuse my ignorance of the proper Ninja terms!), all of which are 3rd party items. The swords have the letters SDT on them which I believe indicates they are mode by Si Dan Toys. They are good quality items, whoever made them.
There is certainly nothing wrong with any of the box's content. It might not be stuff you would buy ordinarily, but it's not rubbish you would want to throw out straight away to avoid contamination.
How much does it cost?
Three sizes of boxes are available costing $13.99, $19.99 and $29.99. You can pay-as-you-go at those prices or you can pre-pay for a 3-month and 12-month subscription which knocks a couple of dollars off the cost each month. You can find out what's included in each tier on the club website's FAQ. The one I was sent is the top tier $29.99 a month one.
Postage within the USA costs an extra $9.99 a month (I think). International shipping is available obviously for an additional charge, but it's not clear exactly what the total is until after you've entered your address and credit card details at which point, presumably, you've committed to spending whatever it is. Unless I'm doing something wrong this seems to be a flaw in the checkout process.
Is it value for money?
I'm not sure... the LEGO included in the box would have cost, what, less than $15, so I guess it depends on the value you put on the minifig. Custom printed figures are not normally cheap: you could be looking at $10-15 if you were to buy it separately so I suppose overall it is reasonable value for money, if the things in it are to your taste.
Certainly there is a degree of excitement getting a loot box through the post every month filled with unknown LEGO so if that's something you would enjoy, you will like Brickbox Club.
Thanks to Tyler at Brickbox Club for sending it for review.
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25 comments on this article
That cobra logo looks like it came from GI Joe.
That's interesting.
The custom ninja actually looks to be Storm Shadow from Hasbro's GI Joe...complete with Cobra insignia. That looks like a cease-and-desist waiting to happen.
Yuck. Doesn't look very good--product wise or price wise. It's not a good value, considering this is supposed to be the large $30 box setup. The smaller prices would presumably hold far less. And there's the issue of not liking the month's theme. It would be cheaper to just buy the Lego from the store and forgo the poor quality custom figure.
But the USA Shipping really doesn't make sense. You spend $30 a month on this and then an additional $10 in shipping (which is ludicrously high). Suddenly this is $40. If you are using even the cheapest box option, you're basically paying double the listed price due to shipping every month!
Things like this sell as gift subscriptions, presumably paid for by people who don't necessarily know the value of the contents.
With subscription boxes being all the rage these days, surely it's only a matter of time before TLG launch their own one of these with unique builds and official merchandise (for reference, check out Marvel/Funko's Collector Corps - http://www.collectorcorps.com/). I know my kids and I will be first in line when TLG announces one, but we're not interested in an unofficial one where the only real Lego is available cheaper elsewhere.
I believe the term you're looking for is "katana".
I can't tell from the pictures, but the blades don't look any better or much different from the older LEGO ones, except these custom ones come with rounded points- so much that they look more like machetes than katana...
I don't see any value in this, especially given that you might not even like what you get in the box- that "custom" minifig could have pretty much been made with standard LEGO parts.
LEGO used to have the Master Builder Academy on subscriptions, it was a way better value than this, but it didn't last long. That is a shame because it was a great thing to receive every month.
At a reasonable price, I would love themed box subscription (City, Technic , Ninjago, etc) but not a random box.
Thumbs-up for the quality Storm Shadow fig, but - as so many have commented above - not convinced the box is great value for money. @Huw if you don't want the Storm Shadow figure, I'd be interested in taking it off your hands (please drop me a PM and hopefully we can sort out a trade ;)
The skirt and hood appear to be from arealight customs. The swords are Si Dan Toys. They both make really good custom items.(I love Si Dan Toys) The swords are probably 80 cents a piece and the hood and skirt would be 3-4 dollars a piece.
One of the most appealing parts of this appears to be the box it comes in--that's the perfect size and style for storage and sorting IMO.
For $40? No thanks.
The content look cool but not attractive to me.
In my opinion, all these loot box subscriptions are a waste of money. Most of them contain T-shirts, posters, candy, and a bunch of other useless stuff. A Lego subscription box is about the only one I would consider signing up for, but as others have said, this one doesn't seem to be a good value, especially if half the box's value is attributed to one custom fig (to purists like me, even the most well crafted custom is still junk since it's not official Lego). Not to mention the horrendous shipping. Lego's own Brickmaster subscription was much better than this.
According to their website, you can expect to "receive awesome LEGO products every month! We carefully select Authentic BRICK Sets, Minifigures, Accessories, Parts, T-Shirts, Gear and much more".
Looks to me like that's an outright lie, since this review and their own website clearly demonstrate that they're openly shipping clone brick moulds with trademark-violating decal prints.
Blech! An $8 LEGO set and a bunch of rubbish, for $40?! That's a *bleep* right there.
I'll stick to buying LEGO by itself, thank you very much.
If you want to REALLY see how your product stands up to critique, have it reviewed on Brickset! It's like Rotten Tomatoes and Reddit in here...gotta love it!
Like ijackson, I would only subscribe (immediately) to an official Lego subscription box from TLG themselves. A couple of people are saying they enjoyed Brickmaster and we didn't even get that temporarily in the in the UK.
I wouldn't personally have printed GI Joe logos on Storm Shadow, perhaps it would have been safer to have him exactly as he is without the logos and just say "it kind of looks like Storm Shadow".
I'd love a Storm Shadow figure..although I'd want licensed skin tone, not yellow.
As for the rest, I can't believe this was the highest priced box. Plus 10$ shipping is crazy.
Am I the only one who saw normal sized minifig and teeny-tiny lego box?
Yeah, thinking about spending $40 dollars on Lego to get a small Ninjango set, and a Mixel figure, plus a custom figure is really ridiculous. Just imagine what else I can get with that money...
-Two large Bionicle Toa sets
-Two medium Bionicle sets+ a Bionicle Protector Set
-A decent sized DC or Marvel Superheros set
-A decent sized Star Wars Set
-Two large LEGO City vehicles.
-Two basic sized Lego Movie Sets, or one medium sized Lego Movie Set
-A medium sized Ninjago, Chima, or Ultra Agents set
-Nearly an entire box of collectible minifigures.
As mentioned the cost adds quickly with subscription, as CCC already mentioned, in four months that is enough money to buy a Modular Building... Yikes!
On the note of the custom figure, it is very easy to buy the parts for a custom direct from the custom parts makers... why would I want somebody to do it for me when I could do it myself cheaper?
That Ninja is from G.I Joe! I mean, look at the symbol. Looks like a good loot crate!
Look at that its Ninja GI Joe!
If its not actual Lego then I'm not buying it. Period.
Looks interesting. Although, i'm worried that the cost of shipping this to the United Kingdom would be quite expensive for what you get in this otherwise nice looking Loot Crate wannabe.
It's a legal scam. You need to realize that such businesses are there just to milk the money.
Scrap the middle man and buy the same stuff from Lego.
In the absence of something like this provided by TLG itself I can understand why a person who was not very knowledgible about the brand might give a subscription to this as a gift. And as a gift it might be rather fun for a child (or even an AFOL), just because of the "surprise package" element. But it's certainly not something I'd expect a FOL of any age to buy for him/herself.