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The 19 Most Bizarre Subscription Boxes You Can Get

 & Jordan Minor Principal Writer, Software

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These days, there’s a subscription box for nearly everything. You just can’t beat the convenience and delight of getting stuff you like, or stuff you didn’t even know you wanted, delivered to your door every week or month for a set fee. In fact, a person could probably live life through the best subscription boxes, subsisting on tasty meal kits, stylish clothing packages, and other items.

That said, if you’re willing to pay a regular fee and roll the dice, you can receive truly oddball boxes. Whether you’re looking to start a new niche hobby or fill your home with conversation-starting collectibles, here are some weird subscription boxes to investigate. Don’t say we didn’t warn you. 


1. Adult Coloring Monthly

Adult Coloring Monthly

The phrase "adult coloring book" may make you think of something vulgar and ironic, but the books you receive from Adult Coloring Monthly are much more sincere. For $12.50 per box, you can add colorful life to intricate monochrome drawings of real-world cities, lovely animals, and soothing natural landscapes. Make a mistake? Your physical sheets also come with digital counterparts to print out. Loyal subscribers even receive colored pencils.

2. Apocabox

Apocabox

We probably won’t be able to rely on the post office or similar services to get needed goods when the world collapses. Before we truly descend into chaos, the $50-per-month Apocabox supplies you with all the doomsday prep gear you need, from specific survival tools (hygiene kits, edible bugs) to just a straight up knife.

3. Box'd Fishing Deluxe

Box'd Fishing Deluxe

Box'd Fishing Deluxe is a subscription service for fishing aficionados. For $55 per month, you get new gear to help you reel in the big one the next time you head out onto the water. With it, you receive bait, lures, and more tools from famous fishing brands. It's the perfect box for your tackle box.

4. Cannabox

CannaBox

Cannabox fulfills your illicit stoner fantasies by delivering all sorts of ganja accessories for around $30 per month. Legal marijuana is clearly the wave of the future, so later generations won’t see anything strange about getting bongs, pipes, rolling paper, and other weed paraphernalia in the mail. 

5. CatLadyBox

CatLadyBox

Feel no shame for your love of fine feline friends. CatLadyBox ships you everything you need to treat yourself, as well as your cat companions. Sign up for the $40-per-month subscription to receive catnip toys, hoodie blankets with cat ears, cat-shaped cooling racks, and other purr-fect gifts.

6. Cloud Paper

Cloud Paper

Toilet paper is more useful than virtually anything else you can regularly get in the mail. You’ll always need it, after all. For $28 per box, Cloud Paper delivers 24 rolls of three-ply toilet paper (with 350 squares per roll made from sustainable bamboo). Somewhere, a family of cartoon bears just fainted from joy. 

7. CrateJoy

CrateJoy

Here’s the most meta entry on this list. Cratejoy isn’t an individual subscription, it’s a portal for browsing and purchasing countless other subscription services. We found most of these entries by diving down Cratejoy’s rabbit holes. If you’re also interested in creating and selling a subscription box, not just buying them, Cratejoy offers the tools to make that happen.

8. Cryptid Crate

Cryptid Crate

We all know Bigfoot is real; we just can’t prove it yet. As we wait until he’s finally ready to make his presence known, let’s geek out over all sorts of mythical monsters and cryptozoological conspiracies for $40 per month. Cover your research lair with posters and art, or get books and movies that reveal "the truth."

9. GloveBox

GloveBox

There’s nothing weird on its own about buying accessories for your car. It’s pretty much a necessity. But it takes a real gearhead to sign up for a service like GloveBox, a $32-per-month subscription box dedicated to all things automobiles. Get all the car cleaning supplies you need, and enjoy discounts with GloveBox's partner vendors.

10. Henny+Roo Chicken Keepers Box

Henny+Roo Chicken Keepers Box

At last, a subscription box for chickens. Whether you run a chicken farm, or try to raise roosters in the big city, Henny+Roo is the service for you. What do chicken farmers need? How about nesting box liners, egg poaching egg cups, and sweet, sweet corn feed? The box costs $41 per month, but the birds are priceless. 

11. Horti

Horti

A $28-per-month Horti box not only gives you plants that bring new life to your home, but it also connects you to a welcoming community eager to educate you on how to best care for those plants. Eventually, you may not even need the box if you learn how to tend to the natural world around you.

12. Letters From Dead People

Letters From Dead People

Letters From Dead People works a little differently than other boxes on this list. For a flat $155 fee, you’ll receive monthly boxes for a year full of clues that help you unravel a larger, sinister mystery. It’s a bit like an escape room. The most gruesome gimmick is that these clues are meant to be letters written by dead people from late 1920s New Orleans transcribed by psychics.

13. Pickle of the Month Club

Pickle of the Month Club

New pickles in the mail every month for $25. Kosher pickles, garlic pickles, "small-batch, premium pickles." That’s it. That’s the pickle box. 

14. Rad and Hungry

Rad and Hungry

If you're someone who spends all day typing on a computer, Rad and Hungry provides a novel, tangible way to reconnect with writing’s roots. For $25 per month, you’ll receive all sorts of nifty office supplies, such as vintage pens, stylish notebooks, and intricate desk organizers. 

15. Skulls Unlimited Bone Box

Skulls Unlimited Bone Box

Skulls Unlimited offers a host of bone-related products and services, from selling real and replica animal and human bones to accepting and cleaning bones from customers. With so many bones lying around, no wonder the company started offering the $25-per month Bone Box, a subscription box full of its products. Put some skeletons in your closet.

16. Slime Box Club

Slime Box Club

If you want goo delivered to your door without raising suspicions, sign up for Slime Box Club. For $30 per month, you and your kids can enjoy so much sticky, slimy, drippy, colorful gak that even Nickelodeon would blush. They also get candy, but just double-check before your kids put anything in their mouths.  

17. Taco Bell Taco Lover's Pass

Taco Bell Taco Lover's Pass

Who doesn’t love to think outside the bun? When you need Taco Bell, you need it right now. Fortunately, for $10 per month, a Taco Bell Taco Lover’s Pass gives you one taco per day, no questions asked. You also gain access to the secret menu where only the taco elite reside. Once Taco Bell started hosting weddings, subscription services weren’t far behind.

18. Turntable Kitchen

Turntable Kitchen

For $25 per month, Turntable Kitchen gives you great food and great music. Sample new singles from fresh artists on boutique vinyl records, along with digital mixtapes. Although you won’t receive a full-on meal kit, you'll get inventive recipes paired with 1-2 premium ingredients. Don’t settle for a subscription that only satisfies one of your senses.

19. Venture in History

Venture in History

With Venture in History, you literally need to spend money to make money. For $18 per month, you’ll receive at least $20 worth of paper money from all over the world. So, whether you’re a connoisseur of foreign currency, or an international spy who’s not quite sure where they’ll end up next, consider giving this box a look. 

About Our Expert

Jordan Minor

Jordan Minor

Principal Writer, Software

My PCMag career began in 2013 as an intern. Now, I'm a senior writer, using the skills I acquired at Northwestern University to write about dating apps, meal kits, programming software, website builders, video streaming services, and video games. I was previously a senior editor at Geek.com and have written for The A.V. Club, Kotaku, and Paste Magazine. I'm the author of the gaming history book Video Game of the Year: A Year-by-Year Guide to the Best, Boldest, and Most Bizarre Games from Every Year Since 1977, and the reason everything you know about Street Sharks is a lie.

The Technology I Use

I use the newest Android and iOS smartphones for testing, but I currently use an iPhone 14 as my personal phone. I just hate that we gave up headphone jacks.

I've always favored gaming laptops over desktops. On that note, I have a 16-inch HP Envy with an Intel Core i9-13900H CPU and Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 GPU. No matter what machine I’m working on, an alarming amount of my personal and professional life revolves around cloud-synced Google Drive files.

For food subscriptions, my household sticks with CookUnity and HelloFresh for meals. Video streaming is a bit more complicated. While there are too many services to list, we're subscribed to most of the major ones. These days, I find myself drawn to HBO Max's movies and shows, as well as Peacock's reality trash.

I've been a lifelong Nintendo fan, and I sincerely believe the Nintendo Switch will go down as one of the best gaming consoles of all time. It has an unbelievable library of new and old games from Nintendo and third-party companies. The handheld/console hybrid approach makes playing games so much more flexible, a legacy that continues with the Nintendo Switch 2 and Valve’s Steam Deck.

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