Hey kids, do you like cool merchandise? It’d be foolish of you not to! Read on to find out how to get your 2016 Giant Bomb member’s shirt (just in time for 2017!) as well as a few other new items we’re adding to the store today, and some others that we’re going to be putting on sale. We also have some announcements about shipping!
New Items!
First off, here are the five new items that we’re throwing into the store. Important note: All of these are available for pre-order until next Wednesday, December 2nd. When we cut off pre-orders, we’ll start manufacturing all of the items and hope to have most of them shipped out by December 16. For most shipping methods, this will mean that they should arrive by Christmas, but unfortunately we can’t guarantee that right now. Want something neat for yourself that might arrive by Christmas, but might not? Order something! Need to get a gift for a mysterious masked murderer who said he’d chop off your head if he didn’t get something awesome in a box by December 24th? Maybe go with that nice toaster oven instead.
Also note that we don’t split shipments, so if you pre-order items and also order items that are already in stock, your entire shipment won’t get sent out until the pre-order items are ready to go.
Also note that in the hustle and bustle of the holidays, we weren’t able to get many pictures of these items in the normal format and have relied on our mock-ups to show you what they look like. We’ll get better pictures in the store next week and will let you all know when those are available. If you’ve seen someone wear one of our shirts before, though, you should have a pretty good idea of what these’ll look like from the sample images.
But enough terms and conditions! Here are the five new items. Click the links to get longer descriptions or to throw them in your shopping cart!
Giant Bomb 2016 Member’s Shirt: Vinny In Spaaaace!
Now, you may ask yourself, why would we be offering new UK and AU-themed shirts when historically our overseas shipping has made ordering items in those countries so laborious? I’m glad you asked! Introducing…
Cheaper International Shipping
We have teamed with our merchandise partner Social Imprints to offer lower shipping to most foreign addresses. Canada, the U.K., Australia, and most European countries should now have an option called International Mail Shipping, which should reduce the price on shipping to around half or a third of what was previously the cheapest shipping option for countries that are eligible. The downside is that delivery will take 1-3 weeks after the item is shipped, so it may be slower than most other options as well. (Note that most of the pre-order items won’t ship until mid-December, so this will most likely push them out until past Christmas if you choose this shipping option! Sorry!) Another downside is that order tracking will end when FedEx delivers the package to whatever national mail service you have to complete the delivery. Sorry about that! Hopefully the cost reduction will even out the negatives here.
In news that comes under the header of “not quite as good,” let’s talk about...
Customs charges
We have had a larger-than-usual number of reports of customs/tariffs charges being applied to Giant Bomb merchandise shipments to non-U.S. addresses in 2016. Usually these shipments will be held up at a customs office and require an additional payment to be released and shipped to the final destination. Unfortunately we cannot take responsibility for these charges and cannot issue refunds for them. If you live overseas, you may want to check with your customs office to see what causes these customs charges to be applied. The U.K. seems to charge VAT if the value of your order and the shipping charges gets above 15 pounds, so keep that in mind!
Other Stuff On Sale!
In addition to putting a bunch of new stuff up on pre-order, we are reducing the price on some of the older merchandise in celebration of whatever sale-related holiday you’d like to participate in this year! All of these prices will last through next Monday, so get your orders in while the getting’s good if you’d like to jump on them. Also note that a lot of the shirts here are no longer being re-stocked, so they may be missing certain sizes. Apologies about that! Take a look at some of the stuff that's on sale:
Preordering and Christmas Orders!
I said this above, but it bears repeating: all of these items are pre-orders, which means that we are going to take as many orders as we can before actually making the items that are ordered (with some extra to keep in our store going forward). We are going to cut off pre-orders on December 2nd, after which these items will go into production, which normally takes around 10 business days. We are hoping to ship most items by December 16th from San Francisco. We cannot guarantee Christmas delivery, unfortunately, especially for overseas shipments, but we are hoping that most of these orders will arrive by the time ol’ Nick comes screaming down your chimney, only to be prevented entry by a Nest thermostat that has somehow turned your flue into an autonomous home defense system.
What's Up Next?
Thanks to everyone who purchases and hopefully enjoys the stuff we sell in our store; your dollars make a meaningful contribution towards letting us do dumb stuff on the internet. We didn't do a good job of launching new stuff this year, or keeping old stuff in stock, for a variety of reasons, but there's a lot of movement towards making 2017 a year with some exciting new stuff coming down the pipe, and maybe not all of it will be t-shirts this time around!
If you have any questions regarding anything above, feel free to leave me a comment here or send something to Support At Giantbomb.com and I will get back to you when I can. I doubt that will be today, though; I've got a turkey to catch. From our families to yours, have a happy Thanksgiving!