If you’re a fan of… pretty much anything, to be fair, you may have noticed the rise of the “subscription box”. Loot Crate lead the way, and have recently signed an agreement with WWE to produce their own offshoot, but they’re not the first to cater to wrestling fans.
I’ve been a fan of the Ashens YouTube channel for a while now, with one of his regular features being something that I believe is a statutory requirement for any YouTuber: unboxing videos. In the same spirit, here’s the first of what’ll be an extremely irregular series, we’ll not be doing any video, but we’ll take a look at some of these boxes, starting with the Slobber Knocker Box. Hopefully there’ll be no inflatable crowns…
Sadly containing zero references to Jim Ross (this month, anyway), the theme of this month’s Slobber Knocker Box was Will Ospreay, which was handy, given he was all over the wrestling media this month. We got the Deluxe box, which came with two t-shirts instead of one.
First out of the box was the first t-shirt – a grey one with Brock Lesnar’s face on it, in a similar style to the OBEY design.
Second up, we’ve got another shirt, a white one with a faux comic book cover printed on it, “WILL OSPREAY: VADER ATTACKS”. This is a really nice shirt, and even better, they give you this design as print, so you can frame it and display it if you want to. Both the Ospreay shirt and print were for deluxe subscribers, unfortunately, but if you were lucky enough, you now own a smashing piece of artwork from Jason Kallend. Interestingly, neither of the two shirts this month are black, so I guess they break the wrestling fashion code!
Next is a drawstring bag, “ReeBrock – Suplex City”. It’s nice enough and the design’s pretty good. I’ve not had a good run with these bags before, but if you’re only going to use it to carry small things around in, it’ll do a job for you. There’s also a signed photo of Abyss, which is pretty neat if you’re a fan of the guy. The Will Ospreay theme continues in two further items: a fridge magnet, and a signed photo of the man himself.
Finally, we get our DVD for the month, which is a TNA DVD for their 2014 One Night Only event “Global Impact: Japan”. This is currently selling for £10 online, and it’s a pretty decent card, taped at Tokyo’s Ryogoku Kokugikan in association with the WRESTLE-1 promotion, On the card is the likes of Magnus vs. Kai, Austin Aries vs. Sanada and Abyss vs. Yoshihiro Takayama. Look out for a review of that soon!
As with all of these boxes, it can be hit and miss – and really dependent on your tastes as to whether it’s good or not – but for me, the quality of the t-shirts alone won me over. Both shirts were Fruit of the Loom shirts, as opposed to the Gildan tees that seem to be the standard. The fact that the comic book design is given as a print as well as a shirt is a good choice, given that (eventually) the shirt will fade away. Unless you frame it. But just frame the print and wear the shirt – it’s easier than wearing the print!
Overall, this is a thumbs up from me!
Slobber Knocker Boxes are available worldwide via http://www.slobberknockerbox.com/ – and come in four flavours: junior, standard, deluxe and t-shirt only. Junior boxes contain t-shirts that’ll fit children, but regardless of order, you still get to pick the t-shirt size. Each box contains a variety of items, including but not limited to t-shirts, DVDs, prints and collectible figurines.
The website contains full pricing details, and also lists the cut-off point for each month – typically the cut-off point is around the 10th of the month, and boxes dispatch around two weeks later.