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So this was kind of fun. And by fun I mean “I almost missed this month’s Loot Crate”.

It seems Loot Crate has switched over at least temporarily to UPS instead of the Canada Post. This might be temporary given the ongoing woes of the Canadian Postal service and their continual threat to strike. Who knows! Anyways, I live in a big enough building that UPS delivery notices seem to just disappear. I wasn’t expecting Loot Crate to get to my house until some time passed the 25th, as usual.

Come the 28th, with no delivery notice to speak of, I took a look at the tracking information from the Loot Crate email. It had been delivered early! Very early in fact. UPS had been holding it since the 19th or something. Actually, they were going to send it back to Loot Crate as of the 27th, which, at this point in the story was yesterday. I called in a panic, got them to hold it and raced to the UPS store after work to get it before they returned it.

At the end of the day, I got Loot Crate.

Wasn’t that a fun story?

September’s theme was SPEED. Do you know what wasn’t included? Anything from the actual movie “Speed”. When I think “What do geeks like?” my first answer isn’t really “fast cars.” But they did a good job sort of blending the fast cars with the geekiness, so full points for effort. However, knowing that the theme was something I didn’t care about thematically, I did opt for a 2XL shirt to give to someone over the holidays. Pictured below will be Sarah in a giant t-shirt.

What’s in the box?

Arrow Hood Ornament

This is a lot like last month’s Hand of Doom piggy bank, only crappier. I don’t want Loot Crate to stop branching out in terms of loot variety, but this was a pretty big miss in my opinion. There would be a lot of things that would have to come together for you to enjoy this item to its fullest. First of all, you’d have to have a car. Secondly, you’d have to take off your hood ornament, that would leave a hole. You’d cover that hole with this ornament, which would only be fixed by a sticker which might pull off your paint if it comes off. Which it almost certainly will if you live somewhere with winter. It also might just break, because it’s plastic. Not even cheap aluminium, but plastic. A rock from the road would frag this thing. Finally, if none of those are deal breakers, you would have to be a fan of the show Arrow. Again, this was a cool thought, but executed about as poorly as could be.
Happiness: ♥

Batwing Keychain

At least this is made of metal! Interestingly, and I have no real way of verifying this since the piece in question is long since lost, I feel like the mold used for this keychain is exactly the same as the mold they used for the MicroMachine Batwing toy that I used to have. It gave me like a tactile flashback when I played with this. This is kind of a gimme. It’s built solidly, it’s Batman related. Pretty sure it would stab you in the leg but that’s fine because it’s Batman stabbing you in the leg and you probably deserve it.
Happiness: ♥ ♥ ♥

Loot SPEED Pin

This pin looks a lot like the Goodyear logo. That’s kind of a bummer. It unlocks a 5 part trade paperpack of Velocity on Comixolog. That’s kind of dope.
Happiness: ♥ ♥ ♥

Stark Racing T-Shirt

This is a good example of Loot Crate blending the geekiness with the theme pretty well. In the Marvel films (and if I’m not mistaken in the comics as well) Tony Stark owns a race team. This is a t-shirt from that race team. Neato. The design looks a lot like an authentic race team, but that’s to be expected I guess since the design is pulled from some fancy Hollywood designer type. It’s a cool shirt that’s geeky, but not TOO geeky. It’s also a good middle ground that I talked about regarding the balance between fast cars and nerd culture. If you can’t tell by the size of this thing, it will be a present for SOMEBODY.
Happiness: ♥ ♥ ♥

Gone In 60 Seconds “Eleanor” Die-Cast Car

Gone In 60 Seconds is extremely high up on my “guilty pleasure” movie list. It’s got everything you could ask for in a movie about stealing cars. Cool car chases, Nicholas Cage, Angelina Dreadlock, Vinnie Jones and an amazing soundtrack. I am sure there’s a good number of people subscribed to Loot Crate that absolutely hated the fact that a little model of Nick Cage’s white whale Eleanor was included in this crate but I am not one of them. This was a complete and total surprise that was like a special nod to my love for a movie that’s kind of terrible from 16 years ago. Unexpected but amazing.
Happiness: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

Scar Battlestar Galactica Figurine

That’s right. I said “figurine” because as we all know Cylon Raiders are basically robots unto themselves. There’s no pilot to speak of. So this is a figurine of a robot that also happens to be a space fighter. Scar’s episode of BSG was one of my favorites. It basically did everything right. It added a bit of character to the Raiders, making them more than just mindless things to be blown up. It expanded a lot of the secondary fighter pilot characters. It provided a lot of “feel” the the world of BSG while still being a self-contained story. Just all around great. This guy comes with a cool little stand and will look badass on a desk.
Happiness: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

Overall?

At the end of the day, this crate was fine. The loot was pretty decent, even if most of it wasn’t my cup o’ tea. The Gone in 60 Seconds car and Scar made up for a theme that I wasn’t really into to begin with and there isn’t a single item in here that I can’t see making a pretty decent gift to the right person.

Keith does all sorts of things here on 9to5.cc, he works with the other founders on 9to5 (illustrated), co-hosts our two podcasts: The 9to5 Entertainment System and Go Plug Yourself and blogs here as The Perspicacious Geek.