I have a bad habit of buying overpriced plastic. At any irksome inconvenience, I feel compelled to take myself to the nearest store to scour for any sort of fun mystery surprise box. While it might perhaps be an evil capitalist habit, I have to admit that I find such simple pleasure in the opening of a probably useless plastic figurine.
I am evidently not alone in my love for blind boxes. Lots of blind box figurines like Sonny Angels and Smiskis have gained immense popularity amongst Gen Z audiences. The ultimate question is why? It seems nonsensical to invest both money and energy into collecting mystery figure sets. Especially given the nature of the mystery boxes; you’re likely bound to get at least a couple of repeat figures after opening enough blind boxes of the same series. Once you own the figures, they’re admittedly not good for much other than décor (don’t get me wrong, I personally love a trinket that doubles as décor, but some may not appreciate the merits of such an object).
On multiple occasions, I have returned home with a haul of fun Smiskis, and my mother has rolled her eyes at the trivial nature of these tiny plastic friends, but for many of my friends and I, opening a blind box proves to be the remedy to a bad day.
In an economy that is constantly denying my friends and me the ability to reward ourselves with a nice dinner or fun activity, buying a relatively inexpensive blind box helps fill the void of the activities we are otherwise not able to afford.
My friends and I have a specific blind box routine. We go to the store and spend a mandatory 10 minutes perusing all available mystery boxes and then take another unspecified amount of time to decide on our top contenders and finally choose which one we are taking home. After purchasing our selections, we happily skip through the parking lot and into whoever’s car we took on this specific excursion.
I set up my phone camera, and we make an unboxing video. We show my phone which blind box we picked up and all the possible options we could pull out of the cardboard box prison. We state which options we would be least and most excited to receive, and after much anticipation, we finally break our mystery figure out of its little packaged jail.
Two of my friends buy their blind boxes in bulk and save them so they can open them as a reward for going to their 8 am classes. When trying to motivate myself to study for an exam, I will set a grade goal, and if I meet it, I allow myself to go out and buy myself a blind box as a treat. In an economy that is constantly denying my friends and me the ability to reward ourselves with a nice dinner or fun activity, buying a relatively inexpensive blind box helps fill the void of the activities we are otherwise not able to afford.
We poke fun at each other when one of us pulls out the exact figure we had stated just seconds earlier that we hoped we wouldn’t get, and no matter how many times we open these blind boxes, we always always always gasp at the first look of our new decorative little guys.
So yes, maybe buying a bunch of plastic figurines that sit on a shelf isn’t the most lucrative of investments, but I would argue it’s better than most alternatives. In the case of blind boxes, the biggest gamble is receiving a duplicate decorative friend, which is arguably preferable to the risky business of an activity like sports betting. Blind boxes are usually not more expensive than twenty dollars, which means that as long as I skip my tri-weekly coffee shop stops, I am in the net positive when buying blind boxes. As a plus, blind box figurines stick around for as long as I choose to keep them on a display shelf in my room; my overpriced lattes only bring joy for as long as it takes me to sip the drink dry.
These little blind boxes have provided us with a community activity. My friends and I find strange amounts of joy in our usually incorrect guesses of what’s in our little boxes. We poke fun at each other when one of us pulls out the exact figure we had stated just seconds earlier that we hoped we wouldn’t get, and no matter how many times we open these blind boxes, we always always always gasp at the first look of our new decorative little guys.
While my friends and I are quite a distance away from a life of luxury, the tiny discoveries that hide inside the box of a Smiski or Sonny Angel are so blissful that a life of opulence feels unnecessary. Until the day that I’ve officially filled every inch of my room with my little plastic friends, I’ll be content with going out with the people I care for most to pick a few up in lieu of a Michelin Star meal.
