Loot Crate Is Bankrupt, Can't Pay Employees Deadpool Merch

There was a brief window when there was a thrill to receiving a mystery box of geeky trinkets in the mail. The concept was like a modern spin on the days when there were products you could only access through ads in the back of video game magazines. That's what Loot Crate felt like for a little bit. After a few boxes, though, it was clear that you were being shipped the spiderweb-covered detritus from a Spencer's Gifts. So it shouldn't be a surprise that Loot Crate has fired a majority of its workforce and filed for Chapter 11.

There are only so many Deadpool keychains people can get in the mail before they realize you're not providing the service so much as an outlet for novelty knickknack companies to dump their overstock of unsellable junk. For every half-enjoyable item in any given box, there were countless Fallout pins and figurines of Walking Dead characters with big heads that served no other purpose than guilting us into keeping something that we should've taken out of a freshly opened box and tossed straight into the trash in one fluid motion.

Loot Crate isn't completely dead just yet. And who knows, maybe if they are bought out by a smart company, they may one day rise like a phoenix. But to do that, it's going to have to solve its biggest problem: No reasonable person would buy any of the items in the boxes if it weren't for the hope that each new box would contain something better than the disappointing garbage heap in the last one.

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