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Obviously everyone knows by now, these boxes are a scam. I did the dumb thing of not looking up Reddit reviews before making my purchase. I saw the discount they had for the holiday season, thought worst case it's not exactly cost efficient, or they only send me terrain. I read the reviews after spending 156, I tried to get a refund before it shipped, they claimed it already had. I spent 156, after the huge discount and put in the selection, I'd like necron, tyranids, or space marines. I get the package today. I have received a single Star wars battle droid, a 3d printed emperor the size of a space marine, 4 miniature gun turrets, a single dice, some 3d printed snipers and a heldrake. I did a quick Google and found out all told the value is around 100, mind you this is with an almost 50% discount on price. Alot of the people they are scamming are new players, family members of players or those that are naive. It's really sad.

TLDR: all the post are correct avoid the spikey bits mystery boxes, horrible buy.

Depending on how you paid seek a refund via a credit card dispute or file a dispute with whichever e method you used to pay spikey bits. At the very worst claim fraud due to 3D unlicensed figures being sold.

From what I gather the 3D prints are just regular ones sold by those who have Patreons/monthly content. So they are likely legitimate models, they are just 3D print models because Spiky Bits has a printing licence.



Though having just watched an unboxing or two on youtube of these, it seems Spikybits might well ship them with the presupports still attached (ergo after curing) which is really bad practice for providing 3D prints in general (support removal should happen before you final cure)

Have you actually contacted them about what you received?

That should always be the first recourse if you are unhappy with a purchase.

Rob Baer doing something unscrupulous? Say it ain't so! /s

Hadn't heard of this before even though I've met Rob in person as he was local to me for few years. I did a search and found that he's been offering these for at least 10 years and people seem not to like them very much. So how are these still a thing?

Honestly, I'm not sure what would entice somebody to buy "mystery box" stuff anyway.

The seller has to make a profit, obviously, so why would they include items with a value equal to or more than you paid?

Most importantly, why would you let a stranger pick things for you? Things that you have paid for?

The only exceptions are when they are done by a company with a reputable history, the GW mystery boxes that they have done a couple of times spring to mind. Even then, GW gave a good idea about what was included, rather than giving the customer no idea.

There's a market for mystery boxes.

Sometimes they are just people who are more painters/modellers than gamers. So they don't really mind what models they get so much as just getting stuff to work with.

Sometimes mystery boxes have themes/focus so it might be a brand or type of model or army/faction and those can be popular for fans of those things who might have a core of what they want and just want more in general.



In the end as long as Spiky makes more money selling them than they cost to produce; they will keep using them most likely.

Mystery boxes can be a good way for firms to sell dead-weight stock that isn't selling fast enough. So they can recover the money to invest into faster selling items; or just to clear warehouse space (pretty sure that was what GW were using them for when they did them - I think they were doing a warehouse move at the time so mystery boxes were a fast way to generate lots of sales and get stuff out the door)

 Overread wrote:
There's a market for mystery boxes.

Sometimes they are just people who are more painters/modellers than gamers. So they don't really mind what models they get so much as just getting stuff to work with.

Yes, there's clearly a market for it, it's just that I don't understand it.

Do some people really have no preference at all as to what they assemble or paint? No preference at all?

I'm way more of a painter than a gamer, yet I just don't understand that mindset, if it even exists.

A lot of people like the fun of a lucky dip, I understand that, spending over a hundred on one seems a bit excessive to me but different strokes for different folks I guess

 Arschbombe wrote:
Hadn't heard of this before even though I've met Rob in person as he was local to me for few years. I did a search and found that he's been offering these for at least 10 years and people seem not to like them very much. So how are these still a thing?

Somebody always buys and it's cash.

I mean one could wonder why nigerian scam"s are a thing but try long enough and somebody falls for it. Free money for little effort.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Undead_Love-Machine wrote:

 Overread wrote:
There's a market for mystery boxes.

Sometimes they are just people who are more painters/modellers than gamers. So they don't really mind what models they get so much as just getting stuff to work with.

Yes, there's clearly a market for it, it's just that I don't understand it.

Do some people really have no preference at all as to what they assemble or paint? No preference at all?

I'm way more of a painter than a gamer, yet I just don't understand that mindset, if it even exists.

Well for some(like with gw) you trade certainty for discount. Getting 200e stuff for less than 200e can appeal. Especially if there's some limits(like 40k/aos). Uninteresting ones can be sold.

Bit more effort needed discount box. How many people you know who think gw doesn't need discounts?

tneva82 wrote:


Well for some(like with gw) you trade certainty for discount. Getting 200e stuff for less than 200e can appeal. Especially if there's some limits(like 40k/aos). Uninteresting ones can be sold.

Bit more effort needed discount box. How many people you know who think gw doesn't need discounts?

Yes, I specifically mentioned the GW mystery boxes as being the only worthwhile ones that I could think of, because of the discount.

 Undead_Love-Machine wrote:

tneva82 wrote:


Well for some(like with gw) you trade certainty for discount. Getting 200e stuff for less than 200e can appeal. Especially if there's some limits(like 40k/aos). Uninteresting ones can be sold.

Bit more effort needed discount box. How many people you know who think gw doesn't need discounts?

Yes, I specifically mentioned the GW mystery boxes as being the only worthwhile ones that I could think of, because of the discount.

Mantic awesome boxes too. 20 or 30 sprues (IIRC) for £15 or £20. It's over a decade later and I'm still harvesting them for parts.

 Undead_Love-Machine wrote:

tneva82 wrote:


Well for some(like with gw) you trade certainty for discount. Getting 200e stuff for less than 200e can appeal. Especially if there's some limits(like 40k/aos). Uninteresting ones can be sold.

Bit more effort needed discount box. How many people you know who think gw doesn't need discounts?

Yes, I specifically mentioned the GW mystery boxes as being the only worthwhile ones that I could think of, because of the discount.

Think you'll find more than just GW has similar.

Mantic, privateer...

Basically any serious mini company.

Clickbait ad site like spikey bits though? Yeah that ain't something that can offer real value mystery boxes.

That’s for sure a really really bad mystery box.

Do they have a write up of what you can get? Since things like unofficial 3D prints of IPs probably should be a no go for any legitimate mystery box honestly.

Unless it’s from a 3D printing or a 3D modeller.

The single battledroid makes me laugh considering the whole box contents.
It’s certainly got that random box concept down doesn’t it.

 Grimtuff wrote:

 Undead_Love-Machine wrote:

tneva82 wrote:


Well for some(like with gw) you trade certainty for discount. Getting 200e stuff for less than 200e can appeal. Especially if there's some limits(like 40k/aos). Uninteresting ones can be sold.

Bit more effort needed discount box. How many people you know who think gw doesn't need discounts?

Yes, I specifically mentioned the GW mystery boxes as being the only worthwhile ones that I could think of, because of the discount.

Mantic awesome boxes too. 20 or 30 sprues (IIRC) for £15 or £20. It's over a decade later and I'm still harvesting them for parts.

Mantic is a great shout, it's easier to do discount bundles with HIPs I guess.

Spikey Bits, the site has had a terrible reputation for years, ad filled, stealing content and even malware.

I can't imagine buying from them when I won't even go on their site.

I struggle to have too much sympathy here.

Spending that much on a mystery box is weird to me. The value of what you get is going to be random by definition, so complaining about the total value is also weird. I'm sure you'd love to get more value than you spent, but that's not how these things usually work. Sure, someone likely will, but the average value will be below what you spent unless the sellers are doing it as some sort of loss leader promotional thing.

More importantly, nothing about the Spikey Bits website suggest spending money with them is a good idea, IMO. It's filled with ads and low-quality, click-bait content. At least it was last time I checked but I haven't been there in a long time after the last time I visited caused my computer to basically have a panic attack and throw up dozens of warnings for various reasons.

Meh people still play roulette even when they know the house always wins.

This is just shopping roulette.

But I still wouldn't give Spikey Bits my money.

I've only always known spikey bits for being overenthusiastic GW hypers more than anything and quickly dismissed this site as trash tier. Happy to see I was not completely wrong in that regard.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
Spikey Bits, the site has had a terrible reputation for years, ad filled, stealing content and even malware.

I can't imagine buying from them when I won't even go on their site.

Yeah, not visted that site in years, and the last time was a quickly-rectified misclick.

Surprised they still exist. BoLS is bad enough to access these days.

 Haighus wrote:

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
Spikey Bits, the site has had a terrible reputation for years, ad filled, stealing content and even malware.

I can't imagine buying from them when I won't even go on their site.

Yeah, not visted that site in years, and the last time was a quickly-rectified misclick.

Surprised they still exist. BoLS is bad enough to access these days.

They must search optimise amazingly as I have never willingly gone there, and they still often come up as top relevant for search results for me.
I won’t say anything about the content, but I don’t like the website and will going anywhere else for hobby stuff because of it >.<