I’ve been sitting here with the snow globe beside me all day, winding and shaking it up, and I can’t tell you how happy it’s made me. Pure joy.
I really struggled with pledging at this level - I’m a terribly frugal person and I don’t usually spend this much money on a thing (experiences yes, things no) but I love this thing to death and glad I made the leap and went for it. I am overwhelmed with how lovely it is and how it represents something that has brought me so much healing and joy down through the years.
So glad.
(I think the moon dust is actually mica dust, if anyone was wondering about that)
Definitely one of my prized possessions from now on.
Yeah. I use the stove and my trusty Revere Ware. I nearly always end up with a few scaly burnt bits at the bottom of the pot, but big deal.
#ClanSnowGlobe
love my shirts, posters and snack pack, i should have splurged for the hoodie #regerts
Technically, the thing was a bonus and you did pay for an experience.
Oh, man… I want an East Eddie SAT Prep Guide.
Put it in the merch request thread…
Got my rewards today. Wanted to share some pictures of, and my thoughts on, the S13 BluRay set.
I really like the design of this set, which feels like an attempt to callback to the original series’ DIY roots in a way that feels inauthentic but charming.
This also carries into the menus, which features the little cardboard figures and Farid Barron Trio music from the Gizmoplex:
The trailers on the menu are the ones featuring Penn Jillette. Sadly, the reveal trailers from Turkey Day 2021 are not included.
For the Gizmoblip Sketches, I would have appreciated a Play All feature.
They all transition seamlessly in and out of the Kinga Test Pattern, with the exception of the March '22: Good & Evil collection, which abruptly cut in and out of blackness. The picture quality on the Good & Evil set is also pretty bad at points.
Sadly, there are no sketches from any of the classic episode livestreams, nor any of the Synthia Selects intros/outros, nor the sketches from the MST3K Festival of Shorts.
While the slipcover features the art that was done for the poster reward, the inside cover features a variation also done in the style of the Gizmoplex commercial breaks.
Note the different spine:
As with the Season 11 and 12 sets, this set comes with a booklet. I won’t post the full thing, since I don’t know that would break some sort of rule and because, unlike the booklet that came with the S11 and 12 sets, which were mostly basic, this booklet has a few easter eggs and some nice art.
I will however, post the cover and a few pages, which outline the titles included on each disc, including the Bonus Features.
Note that the 3D version of The Mask is a slightly different version. At the beginning of the final host segment, Magic Voice’s line about putting on your glasses has been removed.
Probably my biggest issue with this set is the Bonus Features. Not that what’s here is bad, I just think they could have gone even farther.
First of all, there were five additional shorts that could have been included with this set. Circus Day, A Busy Day at the County Fair, the Joel and Emily versions of Behind the Scenes at the Supermarket, and Safety in Offices. These shorts were either riffed during the gap between Seasons 12 and 13, or in the case of Offices, as part of RiffTrax Goes to the Gizmoplex.
Nate Begle provides the voice of Crow in Circus Day and the Emily version of Behind the Scenes at the Supermarket, so that may be an issue depending on how amicable his departure from the show really was. It also may be the reason why the second Kickstarter video - the one where Emily is revealed as part of the cast - is not included either. But all of these are still available online and I disagree with the idea of withholding content because they no longer want to be associated with a particular individual. These are the only shorts in MST3K history to never be released on physical media and none of them are in the Gizmoplex.
I also think more could have been done to include content from the Gizmoplex streams. Now, with literally hours of content from the streams available, including all of it isn’t practical. But the Season 11 set included a highlight reel from the Final Countdown telethon, along with several convention panels. I feel like something similar could have worked here, but instead, we only get a few brief clips in the Year-End Review Revue. along with heavily cut-down versions (about 8 minutes each) of the cast and crew interviews from the Robot Wars, Doctor Mordrid and Demon Squad streams. The livestream events from the Kickstarter, as well as the similarly structured Mindless Summer streams from 2021, are also not represented at all on this set, while the Turkey Day sketches from 2018 through 2022 would’ve made sense to include given that the Season 11 set had the sketches from 2016 and 2017. At the very least, I was hoping for the full Memories Roasting Over An Open Fire to go along with the Phoenixville Q&A session.
All of this is especially questionable given there’s no way to download these streams - if they’re ever taken down for whatever reason, that content may never be seen again. I will point out that the soft-launch streams of the first few episodes (the ones that marked the historic debut of White Dot) are not available to watch anywhere, replaced with the streams that were done for the public launch. One of the reasons why physical media is still so popular among MSTies is that licensing problems that can occur with some of the movies makes collecting and preserving the show a priority for fans… where do you think “Keep Circulating the Tapes” came from? As such, I think more consideration should be given to make these sets as comprehensive as possible. Even if everything can’t be included for whatever reason, a lot more could probably have been included than they did.
There’s also a lack of any newly produced Bonus Material. While the Season 11 set had a new documentary produced by Ballyhoo Motion Pictures and the Season 12 set had a few new featurettes produced by a separate team, there is no new material made specifically for this set. That’s pretty disappointing, seeing as I would’ve liked to have seen how the show was produced during Covid, in front of a green screen (at the very least, maybe they could have included the Work-In Progress cut of Santo in the Treasure of Dracula, to show how it compares to the final product and how much work went into it). In addition, the Season 13 set continues a trend on the Season 11 and 12 sets of not including anything about the making of the movies themselves, something which was a regular feature on the classic series DVDs as recently as 2017, though, admittingly, the cast and crew interviews on this set help to fill the void a bit.
With that said, the Bonus Features that did make it in are still worth it in my opinion. In particular, the inclusion of the Gizmoblip sketches and the Madvertisements are commendable, the former because they’re sketches that go along with those in the full episodes (and you can’t see these anywhere else currently), while the latter is a piece of promotional ephemera I love seeing on releases like these. Since my Kickstarter rewards include digital downloads of the episodes, the extras are a big reason why I go for the physical editions in the first place.
The box set made it in one piece, which is a relief - when I got the Season 11 DVD as part of the Season 12 Pledge Drive, the case ended up smashed and torn, which meant I had to get another copy shipped over. I also got an extra pair of both regular and deluxe 3D glasses… which I think was a mistake, seeing as I already got both last year (the Season 13 set doesn’t come with glasses of it’s own, which is something I would suggest for the general retail release). But I also wouldn’t put it past them that they were just trying to be nice - my copy of the Season 11 DVD years ago came with a free sticker set!
Finally, just one more suggestion… please make the bonus disc available on the general retail edition. I understand wanting to create incentive for backers, but I feel like Bonus Features, at their best, can help foster love for the source material, encourage academic analysis of media and make people want to make art of their own. I feel like that’s not something that should be locked behind Kickstarter exclusivity.
Man, looking at all these rewards just makes me think
Should’ve got more rewards…
The set is great I like all the episodes in one collection. I’m sure some fan has all the skits and segments available online somewhere.
In response to the highlighted part of this comment, I highly doubt the material was withheld because they no longer wish to be associated with someone. Decisions like that are made due to contracts, not feelings. There is very likely something in the contracts signed that prevents them from ever using that material commercially.
The Joel version of the Supermarket one was done for charity, wasn’t it? I doubt they would want to release it.
I was meh on the snow globe during the campaign. I only got it because it came with my overall package but it genuinely impressed me in real life. It could be the coolest snow globe I’ve seen.
#ClanSnowGlobe
… not damaging… anything?
Whatever floats your boat… I guess…