Most people like to find a balance of
work and pleasure in life. After all, there's only so many chores a
human can endure before needing a fine cocktail or movie night.
Striking that proper balance has been a little tougher for me this
past year as jobs have not only taken more personal time form me, but
also provided more disposable income than I've ever had before. On
the one hand it's pretty awesome since I'm able to get all kinds of
goodies. At the same time, there are still dvds and video games from
last Summer I haven't even touched. Recently I've been getting on top
of a lot of that excess and I guess somebody must have noticed, cause
along with this month's Star Wars: Smuggler's Bounty box was a free
extra box from Funko.
The conspiracy center of my brain
banana would love to think this is special treatment for months of
blogs about Funko's subscription services, but try as I might to
appease my own ego, the freebie is simply part of a promotion on
Funko's part. In fact many subscribers were chosen to receive older
boxes from the various services. Not everyone mind you, and some were
so unlucky as to get a repeat of one they already owned. Not me
though. I was lucky enough to score two Smuggler's Bounty offerings
over the course of two days. So with two specimens in hand, how does
this service stack up to Marvel Collector Corps? Let's find out.
The two boxes I received were the new
Empire Strikes Back box, and a Jabba's Palace edition from last
Summer. Just like Collector Corps, these come with the standard
patches and pins. Honestly, both of the patches are a little ugly
with maybe bounty hunter Lea coming out on top. When it comes to pins
though it's all Empire. I mean it's Billy Dee Williams for gods sake!
If I'm able to hunt down a Colt 45 pin, I'll be able to reenact my
favorite malt liquor commercials on my lampshade.
Clothing is a major weak point for
both of these boxes. Jabba offered up another hat. As noted in
previous boxing, I'm simply not a hat guy and while I appreciate the
“programmed for etiquette” statement on the design I still ain't
gonna wear it.
The Empire box commits a far more
egregious sin as far as apparel is concerned bu giving us socks,
patterned socks at that. This isn't something I regularly mention on
here but I despise socks. Like full on stomping and spitting hatred.
Socks are the perfect storm of unappealing and uncomfortable which
means I wear them as little as possible and I hold extra special
contempt for patterned socks. I can't even comment on the quality as
putting them on would be a direct violation of my core sock hating
principles.
Moving on we've got the core non pop
items. The offerings may look unbalanced but there's a good reason
for that later on. Empire only has a wampa plush for an extra. He's
actually really soft and has a good feel so I like him more than most
of the stuffed Funko items I've come across.
Jabba's Palace also featured a plush
in the form of Boba Fett who just isn't as well done as the wampa.
More than making up for that is a Jabba the Hut Pop Mug. This is my
third mug thus far from Funko yet it's the first one I have to
actively defend from grabby hands. Who woulda thought drinking from a
Hut held such appeal for so many people. Wonders never cease.
Here's the reason for that imbalance
in the amount of extra items. As you can see, the Jabba box featured
one normal size Pop while Empire has something much more magnificent
to offer.
Let's get the little guy outta the way
first. It's R2-D2 in his waiter guise from Return of the
Jedi.....so yeah, there's that.
Don't get me wrong, he's neat and all but not something to get jazzed
about.
The Empire box on
the other hand, contains a pop so majestic it convinced me to jump
from one Funko service to another. Viewing it in the package doesn't
even begin to reveal how nice this thing is. The Tauntaun itself is
huge and has nice, roomy base to keep it standing. It's impressive
enough on it's own you almost forget about Han Solo until you see the
finer details of his arctic gear. The only issue is how much space
this thing takes up. Currently I still have it in the box, sitting on
a shelf and it protrudes so much I can't fully open the closet. It's
a small inconvenience for something so delightful.
This
double dose of goodies was a fine way to get introduced to Smuggler's
Bounty. It's a pretty solid service but I do take a slight issue with
the amount of items included. Marvel Collector Corps has the toys,
cloths, patches, and pins, but always manages to squeeze in a comic
every month. Smuggler's Bounty is missing that little extra something
to make it feel complete. If they make up for it with more special
Pops like the Tauntaun then the low item count could be easily
remedied. We'll see how things develop as I'm at least going to stick
around for the Rebels
box in March.
That's all for
today kiddies. I'll be back soon enough, remember I mentioned having
a back log of topics. Also keep an eye out for a new article of mine
over at Dread Central. Beyond that, I'm looking at some further
expansion for CosmicSparky this year. And, ya know what? I'm having a
hell of a time wrapping this post up so let's just leave it at that.
Stay cool everybody.
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