Nerd Block
According to their website https://www.nerdblock.com/:
Every month our expert nerd curators select outstanding gear, toys, and collectables, to provide you with an unmatched experience and an incredible value. Our team pours over hundreds of items per month and cherry-picks the best of the best to ensure you’ll get the maximum enjoyment out of every Block!
We received the Nerd Block for March 2015 and we were pretty excited about it. Here we had in our grubby little hands a box which was billed as a ComiCon in a box. Who wouldn’t want that? I what self-respecting nerd or geek hasn’t imagine taking th pilgrimage to an event like the San Diego ComiCon? To say that our hopes were high was an understatement.
Sad to say we were pretty underwhelmed.
The package was nice: – blue and white box with some enticing, flashy, contemporary graphics in muted colors. We were also pretty fascinated by the labels on the box because it pretty much told you what was inside. This month’s box was curated by Simon Pegg and it contained both a “Shaun of the Dead” t-shirt (black, XL and funny movie reference make for geek wardrobe prerequisites) and his book, “Nerd Do Well”.
The rest of the contents of the box was…well…kind of hit and miss. According to the postcard insert,
“[Nerd Block] teamed up with legendary geek icon, actor, and comedian Simon Pegg this month to see what kinds of things he’d like in Nerd Block! Remember: Simon doesn’t just play characters we nerds like – he’s a nerd himself!”
Which we guessed was ‘ok’ in and of itself, especially if you’re trying to get together interesting stuff to stuff in a box that costs about $19.99.
Card Inserts and the “April Fools!” Kit
We’ve got your insert which explains how the contents of the box was chosen as well as an advert for a Ghostbusters collectible. And you also have a bag with two practical jokes in it, a whoopee cushion and fake ice with bugs in it. The whoopee cushion has Harley Quinn, The Joker’s psychotic, female sidekick printed on it while the fake ice is marketed as Mr. Freeze’s joke. Both of these are packaged together and marketed as an “April Fools!” prank kit. This kit, though, is kind of a problem which will be explained later.
You know what’s kind of annoying for this box? Check out that first image. This is the March 2015 box but the information card calls it “February’s Theme: Simon Says”. So, which is it? Was this originally a February box pushed to March?
Guardians of the Galaxy Nesting Dolls and Rocket Raccoon Magnet
After that you’ve got this nesting doll toy that is based off of the hit movie “Guardians of the Galaxy”. All your favorite characters are represented and each doll depicts them according to their height.
This could have been interesting but for the most part the construction is pretty cheap. Kind of like the plastic eggs you get during Easter with character decals slapped on them. You can pretty much imagine how light and somewhat flimsy feeling the plastic is by the pictures. After a number of times playing with it your shirt to cause the dolls to warp a little or wear out and not fit snugly.
On the plus side you also get a Rocket Raccoon fridge magnet. You can have hours of fun putting it on your fridge and, well, you know, stare at it.
Munny World “Trikky”
Finally, there is a Munny World “Trikky”. From the base to the tip of it’s ear it measures about 2.75″ high. Rather than customize it using markers you are expected to apply stickers to it.
Final Thoughts
We so desperately wanted to like this box as it was our first experience with the Nerd Block. What we received felt like a mish-mash of stuff that used Simon Pegg as a very weak string to link them all together. Think about it thematically: Here is this self-proclaimed super nerd who is tossing in toys from the DC Comics universe (the whoopee cushion and the fake ice) along with a toy from the Marvel properties (the nesting dolls and the magnet). What self-respecting nerd would do THAT?
From a quality perspective the contents were pretty weak. The feel of the plastic from the nesting dolls drives home how cheap it was as it really did feel like a plastic Easter egg. Except that you’d want to hide this thing and not even try to find it.
After opening and examining the contents of the March 2015 Nerd Block we came away with three very insightful observations
- The “theme” of this box was pretty lame. I’m sure if Simon Pegg really wanted to throw cool stuff into a box and ship it to you it wouldn’t contain what was in this Nerd Block. Hell, I’d almost take a few rusty nails and some rocks from Simon Pegg and get more enjoyment out of it because it would have been friggin’ hilarious.
- The contents of the Nerd Block felt cheap. We’re talking really cheap. Even with the Munny thrown in. Everything feels like the the stuff you get in the Dollar Spot section at Target. If you’ve been to a Target then you know what I’m talking about. If they would have thrown in a box of Lemonhead candy we would have been all sorts of stoked.
- I let my 9-year old niece open the box and examine the contents. Her reaction wasn’t one of wonderment and surprise. On the contrary, it was more like, “meh.”. According to her, “It isn’t very good. There’s not a lot of stuff in it and some of it is kind of weird.”
