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Loot Crate's December GALAXY box ends the year on a positive note. Review by Matt Cummings The subscription box war is about to take a Christmas break, allowing winners and losers time to collect their dead, assess losses and gains, and consider past choices and how those will impact 2016 boxes. We've witnessed such a whipsaw in terms of quality, with only Marvel Collector Corps emerging as the box of choice. But Loot Crate has one more salvo to fire, and its contents might make an emphatic statement about their philosophy for next year. Before we get into the details, let's consider an important announcement Loot made a couple of weeks ago: all future boxes will once again contain a shirt. That could signal an important change in the LevelUp program, which required subscribers to pay $14.99 for a shirt, usually shipped separately and continually the wrong size. That change almost made us cancel, but it appears feedback to the company yielded an important

Just how big was The Force Awakens this weekend? Read on to find out! Story by Matt Cummings Star Wars: The Force Awakens stormed into local theaters over the weekend, setting several box office records along the way. Some could see it coming: October's trailer release on ESPN generated huge interest, which eventually led to a record pre-sale that saw website crashes and frantic efforts by fans to score first-day tickets. On Monday, Disney reported the final stunning numbers: $247.9m domestically, which shatters the previously held record by Jurassic World earlier this year. And yet, that massive number is only one of several records which The Force Awakens broke. Here are just a few, as provided by BoxOfficeMojo: $57m in its Thursday night "preview", besting Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 ($43.5m) $119.1m on Friday, beating, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 ($91m) $247.9m domestically, beating Jurassic World ($208.8m)

Marvel Collector Corps attains top sub box status with its GUARDIANS theme. Review by Matt Cummings The subscription box industry is an inconsistent mess, propped up by an amazing reveal one month, then a disaster the next (see our Geek Fuel lamentations HERE and HERE ). The problem seems to be QUALITY and TIMING, with Fuel offering cheap Christmas goods that had very little to do with Star Wars , which is what every December box should be doing. Their November box was also a letdown, filled with slightly more interesting items, but nowhere near their spectacular September submission. While we haven't yet seen Loot Crate's offering, we're worried about the effect that this whipsaw is having on geek lovers everywhere. Why buy a 'mystery box' when it's clear that sometimes these providers are merely robbing Hot Topic and Spencer's of its marked-down merch? As the answers continue to vex us, one box has made quality and timing its #1 goals: Ma

December's Geek Fuel hits the Christmas skids, making us second-guess our commitment. Review by Matt Cummings After a somewhat disappointing November , we were ready for a Star Wars celebration, Geek Fuel style. The subscription box service was 1-for-2, having delivered an exceptional October . But as we soon realized, Fuel has a lot of explaining to do about its December contents, and we probably don't want to know the answers. Before diving in, let's review the details: The cost for a Month to Month is $17.90, $16.90/month for a 3-month subscription, $15.90/month for a 6-month tour and just $13.90/month for a one-year subscription. Shipping $6.00 to the US, Canada, and at least a few other countries. Our first thought is to blast every part of this disaster, but we'll let the pictures do the talking. Again, consider QUALITY and TIMING as you view the following. We'll end our review with some additional thoughts: