Well folks, the countdown ended this morning — and the contents of the Mystery Box are…
Mystery Boxes!
Wait, what?
So it turns out that you can buy your own Mystery Box – a nice one – it’s handcrafted wood box made of 100 year old reclaimed wood, locked, and iron-branded and featuring an alpha-numeric combination lock. It includes a letterpressed note from J.J. Abrams enclosed in a kraft paper envelope, stamped with a black wax seal.
Inside the box are 12 decks of Mystery Box playing cards. Super nice playing cards – they’re individually wrapped in letterpressed kraft paper, with the Mystery Box question mark emblem printed on the front and art direction by J.J. Abrams and Jonathan Bayme. You can also just buy individual decks of playing cards for $9.99.
For each deck purchased, Bad Robot will donate $1 to 826 National, a non-profit dedicated to promoting creative writing in schools and workshops around the USA.
Are you disappointed? Well, come on… Arguably, no matter what was in that box – we were bound to feel disappointed! That’s the POINT of the mystery box – our imagination knows no bounds. The mystery of what COULD be inside, inspires us to think (sorry for this) outside the box. It inspires us to realms of creativity that we didn’t know we possessed. The mystery of what might be in the box, is always going to be better than what’s in the box. Always.
Le’Ann: How can you be disappointed with the donation if you don’t know what their markup is? What percent of their profits does it take? I bet you don’t know, Le’Ann. How much did you raise for charity today?
I dunno what to do when my favorite things come together like this, mind = blown. Magic, Nerdist, Bad Robot, Theory11, Wooden Boxes….agh!
@Luis: I’ll have to take your word on the book, and as amazing as you say it is, I wasn’t knocking it or its author as being the letdown.
It’s just that J.J. got involved and we were fed this mysterious, open-ended video ‘trailer’ for what ended up being a book. Most live-action advertisements for books I’ve seen will at least tell you it’s a book at the end. But no, this is the HypeMachine – everything has to be confusing and *lensflares* and online puzzles to suck time, giving up nothing.
J.J. Is a hack. There, I said it.
@jetpackblues — that book that you were deflated by is AMAZING. it’s a story within a story. Annotations on the side. The experience is amazing it was like your brain was downloading an episode of lost as you read. I was NOT disappointed at all.
The thing I found disappointing was that the donation was only a dollar. Really? They couldn’t dig any deeper than that?
If it’s attached to J.J. and his HypeMachine, it’s bound to be a disappointment.
“Let’s make a dark and mysterious trailer!” What’s it for? “A… BOOK!” *deflates*
“I want to make a Spielberg-ian movie ala E.T.!” What’s it about? “Lego-like, outer space packing peanuts!” *sigh*
“I wanna make a Star Trek movie!” Who’s the villain? “John Harrison!” It’s Khan, isn’t it? “NO! It’s… yes….”
*walks away*
A boat’s a boat, but the Mystery Box could be anything! It could even be a boat!