Unboxing a Korean Mystery Box – You Have No Choice

Sometime around Christmas I was scrabbling for a Yankee Swap present, which got me thinking about mystery boxes. That’s when I bumbled across this company:

I don’t know if YHNC understands how aggressive their name is. Their website is written in broken English and includes such bon mots as “We dont think just selling stuff to customers. We thinks bring happy,surprise and pit-a-pat feelings” and “Investment some money and get big amazing feeling.” Then there’s the mascot. Is that a mouse with a surgical mask over it’s face? I couldn’t imagine an icon which better expresses that this box is packed to the brim with bio-medical waste.

But surgical masks maintain a different connotation in East Asia.  People used to wear them to prevent passing the common cold to fellow city dwellers, but in the fast fifteen years they became such a common sight that now they’re yet another article of clothes to accessorize with.  With the advent of the fashionable designer surgical mask, I’m sure many Koreans think anthropomorphized mice wearing personal protective equipment is cute.  So we can chalk up their logo and straightforward language to translation goofs. However, their use of Uncle Sam to sell boxes continues to slap the tuchus of my brain. Is this encouragement, or a threat?

Fifty dollars is a lot to blow, and I happen to like money. But I got a solid four flimsy excuses for buying a box of random items of questionable utility and/or a pile of used hypodermic needles. They are:

1.) Admit it.  At some point in your life, you found yourself hypnotized by the possibility of what a mystery bag might hold. It can’t be worth the money.  If it were, the seller would remove the item from the bag and sell it.  That doesn’t stop us from wondering what’s inside, though. Today, I’m cracking a box for the sake of journalism. I love the sake of journalism.  It lets me do some righteously stupid things.

2.) I own an Amazon store.  And after looking through a number of mystery box pages, I realized there was no reason I couldn’t do this myself. So far I sold maybe twenty of my own boxes (mostly around Christmas. I assume my customers were looking for what I was originally looking for—an easy out for Yankee Swap.) I need to make a profit, but it’s important that my mystery boxes are entertaining.  In part, because I like to imagine customers smiling when they open their boxes.  But also because I can’t afford to take on a bundle of negative ratings.

Amazon, however, claims $3.44 in fees, and only gives me $5 in shipping credit (even though shipping a three pound box from coast to coast costs $15.) Since I’m making $20 mystery boxes, keeping these boxes budget friendly, potentially valuable, and entertaining is a challenging balancing act. So far, I haven’t received negative feedback. But I got no positive feedback, either. And if customers won’t talk to me about my boxes, the least I can do is poke my head inside the competition’s mystery box and see how they conduct their business.

3.) Since I make my own mystery boxes, that means I can re-box anything I don’t want. Honestly, I wish I lived closer to a Chinatown in a big city.  If I can’t promise my customers value, at least I can supply them with knock-off joke gifts.

4.) Unboxing makes for blogging gold.  The Atlantic?  New Yorker?  They got nothing on the fat stacks that roll in from fresh unboxing posts.  Traditional authors don’t know what they be missing.  Hemingway be like, “Damn son! I gots to get me some of that phat unboxing article booty!”

 

Enough jibber jabber. Let’s look at the box.

Maybe nine inches long, and barely over a pound. That’s not a bad thing. The less I pay in shipping, the more value gets squeezed in the box.

Opening the box, the first thing I find is this:

Tossing a letter in the box costs little, but adds great feels. I should do this with my own mystery boxes. See? I’m learning things already.

After the letter, I pulled a coupon for 10% off my next box purchase:

I’m unlikely to use it, but it’s another nice thought. Next, I pulled a small pile of stickers.

It’s a pity they didn’t put their web address on these. I would gladly do some rogue marketing and stick YHNC’s stickers on random objects around a local community college.  I’m sure I’ll find another use for these sticky vague threats, though.

Pulling out my first item I find…

A brush.  One whose wide-spaced bristles were meant for someone with a full head of thick hair.  I have as many hairs on top of my head as the Punisher carries pairs of handcuffs.  At least I can promise this: I will never part with this brush.  Let’s move on.

A plastic doggie poop bag dispenser? Well that’s different. I got friends with dogs?  But you don’t drop a gift like this at a friend’s house without expecting a few questions.  And I don’t think “I gave someone in Korea $50 and they gave me a doggie poop bag dispenser” sounds particularly sane.  I’m repackaging this into one of my mystery boxes.  One of my customers will need to figure out the correct social context to give someone a dog poop rucksack.

A small notebook.  I write a lot, and can always use more paper. It’s on the thin side, but I can use it for a thin project.

A plastic potted plant? I’m too scatterbrained for real flowers, and the bathroom is a little too bare for my taste. Okay, let’s call this a win. And like Meatloaf sang, “Two out of four is reasonable.”

Socks!  Meant for the feet of a house elf!  Either these socks are intended for a child, or Koreans become smaller the closer you get to their peninsula.

A knock-off Hello Kitty finger nail clipper.  Until this point, I was afraid we wouldn’t see anything that was culturally identifiable.  But the Korean love of kawaii (or ‘gwiyeobda’) is so obvious, that this clipper’s designer gave up and wrote the word ‘cute’ smack dab in the center.  How would we know the round headed, large eyed kitty cat on this toiletry is supposed to be cute unless the word ‘cute’ is emblazoned on its chest?  Manufacturers of the world, pay attention.  Own a fast food restaurant chain?  Sear the word ‘Food’ into every burger bun to avoid confusion.  Do you sell sports cars?  You can stencil the words ‘Larger than average sized penis’ on the side, so everyone will be aware of what image the consumer intends to convey.

A coin purse.  If I’m ever at the Pearly Gates, and St. Peter turns to me and says “We’ve been doing the same old, same old for too long.  God wants to try reincarnation for a millennium, to see how he likes it.  Do you want to return to Earth as a boy or a girl?”  I’d be stuck for an answer.  I wouldn’t mind seeing how the other half lives, but I appreciate being not sick once a month, as well as the superpower of peeing while standing.  Unexpected teenage boners are still a problem, though.  I’d probably end up asking “What’s the pocket situation?  Do they still come standard on males?  Are women still forced to carry purses inside of purses? Or did humans evolve beyond hanging their possessions from their shoulder?”

A teddy bear tape dispenser that retracts when you press its button nose.  [Hello there.  This is John-Michael editing what I wrote in the past.  By this point, I opened the box, took pictures, and wrote the first draft.  In that first draft, I searched my office high and low for a ruler to measure the dimensions of the mystery box.  After wasting, oh, five minutes, I gave up and guessed at the box’s dimensions.  This, despite the fact that the mystery box contained not one, but two rulers which were sitting on the desk in arm’s reach.  Now that I’m editing, none of these things are near me.  I am a bona fide idiot.]

[John-Michael from the future again.  When I first saw this yo-yo I thought, “What a shame.  If I want this yo-yo to maintain value, I can’t take it out of the package and play with it.”  As Foghorn Leghorn once said, I’m about as sharp as a bowl of Jell-O.  Let’s tear open the package and see how shoddy our dollar store yo-yo is!]

[Ooh, yeah!  Action yo-yo shot!]

[I accidentally did a single yo.  That’s when Crazyface jumped down from his perch and got in on the action.  Yo-yos are only passable toys for cats.  Its like batting a turtle around on a string.  Too tough on the paws.  But Crazyface had fun before resigning to wait for the blinking orange turtle to poke its head out.]

A very busy picture frame.  This would be a great find in a mystery box if the frame was larger than a half dollar.  I’d say this frame is perfect to display wallet photos on your desk, but you would need to cut one in half before squeezing it in here.  Clearly, you use this frame for people you feel obligated to display on your desk, but who you don’t want anyone to see.  Your least interesting child, perhaps?

Of note: there’s a Caucasian boy in the picture.  I mean, he’s cool.  Nobody said he couldn’t hang out.  I find it odd, that’s all.  The frame, I presume, was made in Asia and sold in Korea.  I’m sure the European/American market is valuable, that this item is mass-produced, and even if none were sent to Western shores, dumping a white kid in the shot could potentially increase the frame’s value in some people’s minds.  But I can’t help imagine I’d be bothered if I was a Korean man scanning a store shelf, looking at picture frames which were made locally, but ones which displayed a sea of white people.  I’d want to see Korean faces, even if it’s to sell cheap frames featuring fake people with plastic smiles.

Hey, a couple coins!  Neat.  The coins total 150 won, which is a little more than thirteen cents.  Obviously, no one was expecting serious scrilla.  But I collect odd coins, cheap rings and costume jewerly in a ‘treasure bag’ for Dungeons and Dragons.  These will wind up in the prop collection.

A paper fan.  Cheap, but pretty.  I wonder whether or not the person picking this understood that paper fans were easy to find in the U.S..  Or did they think they were sending something culturally distinct?  If I was to send a mystery box to Korea, I’d try to stick in it as many things I could find that you can’t find in Korea.  I wonder… how often would I mess up?  How often would I metaphorically send a can of Coca-Cola, when I should have sent a can of Dr. Pepper?  (And even that might not be exotic. Brian Ashcroft wrote this article for Kotaku about how the Japanese are accepting Dr. Pepper as an alternative cola back in 2011.)

Another ruler.  This one features ‘Chocolate Bear’ who commands me to ‘Love’.  Well, at least the ruler doesn’t insist it’s cute, like the fingernail clippers.   There’s a communication barrier between us, but Chocolate Bear means well.  I can be more loving.  But if you dare command me to ‘Draw’, Chocolate Bear, you go right in the trash.

A carabiner clip—the only useful item in the box.  I’m writing this off as a mistake.  I mean, I could clip this to my keys so I didn’t lose them, and bust it out when an errant rope or bungee cord refused to stay in place.  This clip could increase the overall value of my life.  Who puts something like that in a mystery box?

Now this is more like it.  An object which looks useful, but then you realize something is wrong when you discover how light it is.  This pocket knife may be okay for cutting apples (soft apples.)  But if I ever use this toothpick for self defense, I’m sure it would bounce off my assailant’s skin and shatter into five pieces.  I’m better off tossing it to my opponent to distract them while my foot buries itself to the ankle in their crotch.

And finally, a cheap key chain.  Which now that I think of it, I need one of these.  And it’s a nice picture, too.  I played a few of these items up, and sold myself on how I could use them.  It’s what you do when you blow the cost of a Kindle Fire on a pile of trinkets.  But this is an item I can both use, and like.  So score a win.  I bought a $50 key chain that will break in a month.  At least I’ll enjoy it for the month I use it.

Conclusion

The box wasn’t worth the money, but I never expected it to be.  Also, You Have No Choice only promised ten individually wrapped items, so it was a pleasant surprise to instead receive fifteen items—seventeen if you count the coins and the stickers.

Admittedly, most of this stuff you could pick up in a dollar store.  Presuming that’s what YHNC did, then I payed $50 for what I could have done for $15 while blindfolded and sitting in a runaway shopping carriage. If that’s the case, you would think they would include thirty items in the box if they wanted my repeat business.  But having put together mystery boxes myself, I know it isn’t that easy.  I don’t really know how much this stuff cost.  I imagine a dollar per, but a few of them could have been two or three bucks and I would be none the wiser.  And there’s shipping and fees to consider.  Amazon credits YHNC $5 shipping, but probably takes $10 out in fees.  If I instead bought this from YHNC’s website, I would find the shipping was free over there.  If I was to ship this box to South Korea, it would cost me $22.75.  Shipping from South Korea is cheaper than shipping to South Korea, but the cost isn’t negligible.

Considering all that, I think they did a good job.  This shtick is hard.  Most people look at the stuff they receive and think the junk they get is just junk.  But everything has a cost.  And finding a way to turn the process of getting junk into an experience is an endeavor.  That said, I still dropped $50 to get a box of junk.  I’m not saying it wasn’t entertaining, but certainly there are better ways to waste your money.  You know… like giving to the Nerd Fountain Patreon page.  Ah, well, it was worth a try.