#StarWarsSmugglersBounty Unboxing: December 2015

The first Star Wars/Funko box arrives with geeky goodness.

Review by Matt Cummings

Subscription boxes have gone from newest fad to what-have-you-done-for-me-lately. Its meteoric rise has seen truly amazing boxes (last month's Loot Crate) and frankly awful ones, sometimes by the same company (see our ripping of the September Loot Crate). At the same time, a franchise like Star Wars has chosen to remain on the sidelines. For a franchise with such an amazing fan base, one would have thought the people at Lucasfilm would have deep roots in sub boxes and might moved forward a lot sooner. Regardless of the reasons why, it's time to celebrate their arrival with a great first submission from Smuggler's Bounty.

Before diving in, let's review the details:

The cost for a Month to Month is $25 (plus S/H), or $150 (plus S/H) for a one-year subscription.

You get one box every other month, with SB promising $50 in value and no fluff.

If you choose the Smuggler membership (yearly), you are promised an additional gift on your anniversary. Guess which one we chose.

Sporting a theme of The First Order, this first box features baddies like Captain Phasma and Kylo Ren. As you'll soon see, Smuggler's did the right thing to wait, letting fans decide what worked in these boxes and then basically grafted those expectations into this box. A gander provides all the proof we need. We'll meet you on the back end to share some thoughts:

Quality First Attempt
In many ways, Smuggler's Bounty bypasses all the problems which earlier Marvel Collector Corps, Geek Fuel, and Loot Crate experienced, both with shipping problems and the quality of certain items. As you can see, each and every one of SB's products is worth their weight, with the Funko figures going for three times their worth on the secondary markets. I also like the no-fluff promise, which means we only get high quality goods.

Who knows if we'll be saying this next time, when SB presents The Resistance, but for this round, score one for the bad guys! If you missed out on this box, The Resistance is now available for pre-order.

Discuss this review with fellow SJF fans on Facebook. On Twitter, follow us at @SandwichJohnFilms, and follow author Matt Cummings at @mfc90125.