D'ya know what I hate? Blind boxes. I can't stand products you're intended to buy without fully knowing what's inside the package. Like, sure, you know it will be one of eight potential toys or keychains or incomprehensible squishy things, but whoops! You didn't get the one you wanted. Better go buy five more and hope you get lucky this time! I simply cannot stand this business model. Selling what is effectively gambling to children is despicable and should be illegal.
But hey man, I'm really liking these Super Mario Kinder Joy eggs!
For the uninitiated, the Kinder Joy is the US's answer to the classic European treat, the Kinder Surprise, which can't be sold here due to food regulations which state that a food can't be sold with something non-edible inside of it. For example, a chocolate egg with a little plastic capsule containing a toy. To get around this, the Kinder Joy is comprised of two halves, one containing a sweet chocolate paste and two crispy wafer balls, and the other containing a random toy. "A random toy," you scoff at your screen. "So you hate them, then, huh, G-Zone?" Okay, so here's the thing. At least with Kinder Joy, you know what you're getting for half of the package. It's always the same candy. And as for the toys, well, for one, Kinder Joys are cheap, so you could quantify each half as costing, like, 80 cents. More impressively, I bought more than ten of these things before I got a single repeat toy. I was shocked!
The toys are not really toys, though. They can be used as such, as all things can, but they're more in the realm of school supplies. Let's take a look at my current collection:
So far I have...
Mario, Luigi, Super Star, Cheep Cheep and Eep Cheep charms
Spiny, Boo and Blooper clips
Mario and Peach pencil decorations(?)
? Block with 1up Mushroom adhesive pencil and card holder
? Block, Brick Block and 1up Mushroom card holder
Piranha Plant zipper charm
I feel the charms are sort of the star of the show here. They're sculpted and painted pretty well for 80¢! The Mario and Luigi ones even stand on their feet! I can't say the same for the Piranha Plant zipper charm though, as it's just a plastic slab with a sticker which you have to apply yourself. It's attatched to a flimsy plastic hanger meant to be affixed to a zipper pull, which I fear it'd just break off of. I also see quite limited usage of the pencil decorations, since I rarely handwrite anything these days. They do fit well on drinking straws, though! The card holder, on the other hand, is pretty useful! I may want to either stick it down or put something inside it to weigh it down, since it's completely hollow and therefore quite light. I keep a postcard in it, but the ceiling fan proves too powerful for it and blows the whole shebang over pretty frequently. The clips aren't all that strong, but they might work well enough for that party size bag of Doritos. That pencil holder is insane, though! The adhesive on the back is just some kind of rubbery white material, but when you put it on glass, it's like it's welded on there. Seriously, slap this thing on a mirror and try getting it off. The 1up Mushroom on top of it has no adhesive behind it, so you can kinda wedge a notecard or whatever behind it. It feels a bit unintentional, but it shows it in the instructions.
Oh, speaking of which, don't toss those instructions! You can scan the QR code to be taken to a cute little camera border based on your character/object. Every character/object you scan adds an icon of them/it to the border so you can show off how much chocolate you've eaten. At the moment, I've amassed 14 different borders, and I'd guess there are four or five left. The two 1up Mushroom items didn't unlock separate borders, and in fact, they both registered as Super Mushrooms. I guess that tells me there are Super Mushroom items in this set. Similarly, the Cheep Cheep and Eep Cheep both categorized under Cheep Cheep, which makes sense. I've resisted the urge to look up all the available toys, but I'm really hoping to see Bowser in here somewhere. Goombas, Koopas and good ol' Yoshi are some other faces I expect to see in my collection before too long. As I said though, hold onto those instructions, since you need to re-scan the relevant QR code every time you want to switch borders. You might expect to be able to just tap an icon to switch over, but for whatever reason, that doesn't do anything. Unfortunately, I seem to have lost the Spiny one. Here's hoping I either find it or get a duplicate, I suppose.
I may update this page as my collection grows. These things are just too hard to resist... even if they are 50% blind box.