This Makes Me Happy: What's in the Box?!?: July Gentleman's Box, Star Wars Smuggler's Bounty, and Marvel Collector Corps Year One Special

First, apologies for not having a blog last week. We were traveling, and dealing with some stresses at work and at home, and I just wasn’t able to get anything done early enough.

This week, we’ll be talking about this month’s subscription boxes!

First up is the Gentleman’s Box, which was waiting for me when we got home on Monday. Since the packaging is the same every month, I didn’t bother to take a photo this time.

This month’s box honors “Our Favorite Fashion Mogul.” Reading the description, that is apparently Tommy Hilfiger, but I had to do a little research to confirm that.

This month’s box isn’t jam-packed with little items, but what is there is definitely quality. $101 worth of quality, retail, according to the booklet.

First up: this month’s pair of socks! These come from William & Sterling and are no-show socks. They look nice, but I haven’t tried to wear them yet. I recently purchased a new pair of shoes that are kind of rubbing the backs of my heels, so I’m reluctant to wear these socks with those shoes yet. They might be better suited to wear with my weekend sneakers.

Speaking of my new shoes, I had been thinking that I should get a shoe horn to make it easier to slip them on, without rubbing the backs of my heels and ankles. Fortunately, this month’s box included a nice leather shoe horn from Gentlemen Essentials, and it has really done the trick. I’ve been using it every day.

The biggest-ticket item this time around is a new leather wallet from Kiko Leather. It’s really nice, and retails for $45. Unfortunately, it doesn’t say if it blocks RFID signals like my official Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD wallet which my wife—who knows me so well—bought me. However, that SHIELD wallet is getting a bit stretched out, so maybe I will rotate between the two of them.

This month’s item that I am least likely to use is the “Navy Jack” pocket square from Nikolas Ryan. It’s red and white striped, and they recommend using it with “a tan or white suit—two options that should be essential in your summer wardrobe.” Maybe they should be essential, but I don’t own a suit in either color.

Finally, I received a small container of Balla body powder. I haven’t tried using this yet, but it smells nice. We shall see if it “ensures that your armpits, feet and nether regions stay fresh and dry for hours on end.”

The theme of this month’s Star Wars Smuggler’s Bounty box from Funko is Jabba’s Palace, and includes some nifty items.

This month’s pin is a Gamorrean guard, and the patch is of Boushh, the bounty hunter disguise worn by Princess Leia. For the first time, I bothered to look up the Aurebesh writing on the pin and patch, and discovered that they say (unsurprisingly) Smuggler’s Bounty.

Inside, we get the now-customary card revealing that the theme of the next box will be the Death Star (which is cool) and giving information about the contents of this box.

This month, we get another huge ceramic mug, this one featuring Jabba the Hutt’s face. The more of these mugs I get, the more they are growing on me. But also, the more we get, the harder they are to find room for them in our cabinet, because they are HUGE! Also, when you put a normal amount of coffee in them, it looks like there’s barely anything in them. Finally, while the idea of the big head mugs are cool, I’m not sure if I want to see Jabba sticking his big fat tongue out at me while I’m eating breakfast.

Pop! Tops are a new line of hats from Funko, and this month we get the first Star Wars one ever made (they tell us). I like the See-Threepio patch on the hat, but I’m not entirely sold on the design. The crown is too high and squared off for my tastes, and the brim is too flat. Maybe I can shape the brim into a more comfortable look for me, but I think the shape of the hat may be better suited for a Funko Pop! than my melon. We’ll see.

Another new line from Funko is Plush, and the first one to be released to customers is the Boba Fett plush. This one is super-cute, but I’ll have to keep the cats away from it. It even has a little jet-pack on the back (but I didn't take a photo of it; sorry).

The final item is the exclusive Pop! for the month: Artoo-Deetoo with his drinks-serving tray. This is super-adorable. According to the card, this is also a new droid design that will be used for future R2-D2 Pops. I have a super-realistic R2-D2 figure from Sideshow Collectibles that also has the drinks tray as an accessory, so this Pop! is now sitting next to that in our curio cabinet.

Here are both sides of the insert card.

The final box I received as of this writing is the Marvel Collector Corps Year One special box. This was a limited edition box only available to founding members, and has reportedly sold out from the Collector Corps website. However, somewhat controversially, they seem to have announced on Facebook that it will be available to purchase at their SDCC booth, which, if that’s the case and they’ve told Collector Corps members that it’s sold out, that’s kind of lousy.

Regardless, I was able to order one from the web site before they sold out, so let’s take a look!

The first thing to notice is that it’s considerably larger than the normal Collector Corps box. Here are some photos. Morticia, the black cat, is about 9 pounds, and Rumplestilskin, the blond flame-point ragdoll, is about 13 pounds.

As usual, Rumplestilskin is more interested in Morticia's butt than the box.

"Where'd she go?"

Inside are the usual patch and pin, only this time they are HUGE! I have most of my Collector Corps pins on a lanyard at work, but I’m not sure I can manage to carry this one around all day. I have included my hand in the photo for comparison.

This box’s card has a nice photo of all the previous items included in earlier boxes, with information about the box’s contents on the reverse. (I’ll include a photo of that at the end of this entry.)

As you can see, there isn’t a massive number of items in the box, but what there are are large.

The biggest item is a gold Captain America Hikari figure, an exclusive to this box. The Funko Hikari sofubi figures retail for $75-80, and this is an exclusive, so that’s pretty cool.

This box also includes another new Pop! Top, this time featuring the Pop! version of Groot. I love Groot, but I am still not sold on the shape of the hat.

As I have mentioned in previous blogs, I’m becoming increasingly fond of Funko’s Dorbz line, so I was pleased to see this box includes two of them. One is She-Hulk, who I have been a fan of ever since I first encountered her in the pages of Roger Stern’s Avengers, followed by John Byrne brining her into the Fantastic Four after Secret War. Like last month’s mini-figure of Jen, this one is fantastic. Between that figure and this, I may not even bother purchasing a She-Hulk Pop! figure. (Or I might; I have little to no self control.)

The other Dorbz figure included in this box is Ant-Man. While I don’t have as much of a history of Ant-Man, I’ve become a big fan, primarily through his appearances in Matt Fraction & Mike Allred’s FF comic, his recent comic written by Nick Spencer, and, of course, his movie appearances.

Finally: this month’s exclusive Pop! is the Hobgoblin, which is particularly exciting for me. I first began reading Amazing Spider-Man on a regular basis after reading an article in the late, lamented Comics Scene magazine where Roger Stern talked about introducing the Hobgoblin. I was intrigued by the idea that they weren’t going to reveal his true identity right away, and I wanted to get in on the ground floor of that mystery. So the first issue of Amazing Spider-Man I ever bought was issue 238, the Hobgoblin’s first appearance.