Mystery Boxes Are Booming on E-Commerce Platforms

Reckless online shopping has a new poster product: the mystery box.

It sounds like the Lost Ark of a tween cartoon, but mystery boxes—boxes of random products curated around themes from “relaxation” to “witchcraft”— are thriving online. Vox reports that “mystery boxes” logged almost half a million search requests on Etsy between January and July of this year.

It’s the inside that counts. These “mystery boxes” are entirely DIY’d by the sellers, and shoppers don’t know what they’re getting until it arrives. Fans who’ve ordered them say that they feel more “personalized” than a corporate Birch or Bark, which rely on user data to make their selections.

• Some brands are joining this particular guessing game. Ban.do, an apparel and accessories store, sells mystery bags of its merch during its annual sale.

Zoom out: Some traditional subscription boxes with earworm podcast ads are going the way of the paper catalogue. 13% of merchants tracked by My Subscription Addiction had ceased operations.