The Mysterious Package Company
# The Mysterious Package Company

The Mysterious Package Company is an experiential service established in 2013 which provides stories, puzzles and mysteries purchased as gifts and sent through the mail.

## History

Colin Bolton, Misha Schneider and Tim Sullivan co-founded The Mysterious Package Company in 2013, as they wanted to create wondrous stories delivered through the postal service.

In 2014 Jason Kapalka, a Vancouver-based entrepreneur came on board as primary investor. Kapalka is co-founder of PopCap Games and owner of the Storm Crow "nerd bars" in Vancouver and Toronto.

## Kickstarter

### The Century Beast

In 2015 the company launched The Century Beast Kickstarter campaign. The campaign raised over $400K and was backed by 1,291 pledges.

### Filigree in Shadow

In 2016, the company introduced a Victorian horror Experience, Filigree in Shadow, as a Kickstarter campaign. Filigree in Shadow currently sits as the ninth-highest-funded art campaign on Kickstarter to date. It is also the second-most-funded mixed media campaign in the world. This campaign raised over $600K and was backed by 1,786 pledges.

## Experiences

Experiences are the Mysterious Package Company's primary product. They are stories or mysteries told over a series of mailings to the recipient. Each experience contains:

* Documents and other media
* An element of personalization or customization
* An artifact related to the details of the story, usually in a nailed-shut wooden crate
* A Reveal card identifying who sent the package(s), if they were a gift

Members purchase packages that they send to themselves or a recipient of their choice. The experiences feature genres such as mystery, horror, adventure, time-travel, and science-fiction, and range in duration from one to six mailings.

## Curios & Conundrums

Curios and Conundrums was a quarterly subscription box that ran from 2013 to 2018. Unlike the Experiences, it was not meant to be a realistic, coherent narrative, but a grab-bag or anthology of puzzles, stories, and interesting trinkets.

### Volume III

Issue 1 - A new Era of Thought

* Eight-page broadsheet newspaper, filled with stories and puzzles, a poster, several travel stickers, and the cover of a magazine that may have been.

Issue 2 - The Child of the Cavern

* Twelve-page broadsheet newspaper, several travel stickers, a copy of their first game, Motherland, and a variety of other tools and techniques.

Issue 3 - From Death and Dark Oblivion

* Twelve-page broadsheet newspaper, several travel stickers, additional cards for Motherland, and a gift of real gold.

Issue 4 - At the Mountains of Madness

* Twelve-page broadsheet newspaper, several additional stickers, a game of goats, and some very disagreeable paper-crafts.

### Volume IV

Issue 1 - Gods of Madness

Issue 2 - Brain Butchers

Issue 3 - Clockwork Mutineers

Issue 4 - Countdown to Oblivion

