Just wanted to let everyone know that from 10 AM Pacific on November 5th until 9 AM the next day (thank you very much daylight savings), JC & WallE and a bunch of friends will be livestreaming for 24 hours to aid Extra-Life. To watch the stream, head to the Whiskey & Waffles YouTube channel at any time. And, more importantly, if you’d like to make a donation, you can go to the Extra-Life donation page.

Extra-Life has already raised more than $22 Million for the Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals since its inception in 2008. This year, before tomorrow’s Game Day 2016, it has already raised over $3 Million.

Going to Comic-Con in San Diego is a commitment. It’s not just the travel, the hotels, the Lyfts and Ubers, the food, and the drinks (…oh so many drinks), it’s much more. The floor of SDCC is the ultimate test of maintaining your composure and measuring your self-restraint.

And many, if not all of us, fail. New vinyl collectibles, classic non-sports trading cards, prints, sketches, autographed memorabilia, comics, nostalgia filled unpackaged toys, trades, meet & greets are just the start of the ways that your wallet can bottom out within just a few hours if you aren’t careful.

I, like many, try to go down with a plan on what I will be purchasing. As a Comic-Con veteran of nine SDCC’s (eight of them being consecutive), what I look for in advance is the list of the exclusives. This gives a good baseline for what will most likely be purchased.

This is the first of three (possibly four) recap videos from San Diego Comic-Con International 2016 from my trip this year. As it is my eighth year going as a part of The Flickcast, it has been an honor covering the convention in a variety of ways such as photo galleries, interviews, visual tours and unboxings. This year will be no different. Later this week, our Comic Con shopping haul video will release followed by our Field Trip video where we take you down to the Con floor and even some of the VIP parties.

Our first video kicks off with the Loot Crate Gallery of Heroes Convention Exclusive Crate. Founders of the monthly geek in a box phenomenon, Loot Crate has maintained the top spot in the subscription box community.

Con Season 2016 has begun! With everything from PAX East this upcoming weekend all the way to Comikaze in October, the best half of the year is underway. In an effort to best cover these, The Flickcast has made sure I have appropriate credentials to get on the floor (or at the least, a map of where all the best bars and parties are) at each convention.

First, I headed to WonderCon as a part of The Flickcast team and Whiskey & Waffles. At the event, I had four very important ‘jobs’:

1. Speak on the SKYBOUND panel about digital video creators

2. Take the Mighty Wallet Challenge

3. Snag one of Loot Crate’s 2016 Convention Exclusive Crates

4. Cosplay as Hawkeye

Last month right before Comic-Con, Loot Crate released one of their best crates with a phenomenal Villains crate that included a totally original and exclusive Joki shirt alongside, amongst other things, a pair of Deadpool socks. It was going to be pretty hard to follow that up. But who better to show up the Villains than… the Heroes.

This month WallE and JC put their physical prowess to the test in an effort to capture a bunch of items based off of some of their favorite childhood heroes along with an exclusive Pop made just for Loot Crate. As some of you have seen in past crates, WallE and JC have an addiction for the little guys and battling over an exclusive one could possibly end their friendship and Whiskey & Waffles as we know it.

Hot on the heels of Comic-Con comes the next unboxing in the Loot Crate Wars series. For July and August, the guys at Loot Crate have created a two part crate. First, July kicked things off with Villains as its theme which started with an awesome super foe themed trailer on Loot Crate’s own YouTube channel. In it is some of the baddest of the bad as you’ll see in the unboxing video below.

Most notable of the Crate (while still trying to keep the article spoiler-free-ish) is a special variant comic for a number one that just came out from Marvel. Loot Crate’s subscriber base has gotten so big that just by putting it in the July crate, they literally doubled the preorders of the book.

Another day, another dollar. Another Loot Crate, another unboxing. Our apologies if you already came across it yesterday, but if you haven’t, you can check out Whiskey & Waffle’s Loot Crate War on the Adventure themed box. (Actually, even if you have already seen it, you can watch it again.)

This month’s Loot Crate theme is all about Adventure. As you can probably guess from the cover image above there is some Minecraft and some Legend of Zelda swag inside but also some Adventure Time love as well as some gear from some of our fellow YouTubers like Captain Sparklez and Markiplier.

After the debacle of last month’s Warriors Loot Crate War, I took matters into my own hands. I picked the game and also watched over WallE’s shoulder while he was editing. If I was going to lose this Loot Crate War I would be doing it on my own terms. While the whole problem could be easily solved by ordering a second Loot Crate to Whiskey & Waffles HQ, there’s just really no fun in sharing.

This month, Loot Crate’s theme is Titan, or more specifically Attack on Titanfall. A mashup box of two popular Titan titled properties with Attack on Titan, a manga/anime/game, and Titanfall which is pretty much the most talked about game out so far on the XBox One. While keeping it spoiler free, I will say the items in this crate were definitely the most focused on a topic thus far and would really be appreciated by fans of one of or both series. That said, if neither of the two appealed to you this month probably wasn’t a month you were clamouring for although they do a great job of giving an introduction to one of the series *hint hint*

Our apologies for the hiatus, but the team at Whiskey & Waffles is back for 2014 and ready to kick things up to the next level. For the new year we are bringing gameplay footage to Whiskey & Waffles for the first time and expect more of it moving forward. For our introductory gameplay, WallE and I are going head to head in the Loot Crate War for the month of February with the theme: Warriors!

For those new to Loot Crate, it is a monthly subscription service that sends a box full of themed geek goodies. This month’s crate revolves around Warriors, with the most popular warriors in the geekspace right now being the Bravest Warriors on Cartoon Hangover. But without spoiling it (since that defeats the purpose of our video), I will tell you there are more Warriors tied into the contents of the box rather than just the Bravest Warriors too.

‘Tis the season and we at The Flickcast along with the Whiskey and Waffles team want to point everyone in the direction of one of our top gift recommendations. Every month, WallE and I get a Loot Crate shipped to our HQ and proceed to compete over the items inside. The reason we can’t share is because the stuff inside is just too cool to spread the wealth.

What we recommend is that people make sure to buy each of their loved ones a subscription which starts at $13.37 a month (yes, their price is “LEET” so you know these guys know what they are doing). If you head to www.lootcrate.com/whiskeyandwaffles and use the code “whiskeyandwaffles” you’ll get a 10% discount.

As mentioned, WallE and I cannot share. So that lead us to create the Loot Crate War. Last month, we competed for zombie related swag. November was all about celebration between the 50th Anniversary of Doctor Who and the birth of a new console generation with the PlayStation 4 and XBox One launching.

Each and every month, the folks over at Loot Crate send out thousands of custom monthly boxes to their subscribers filled with astounding levels of geekery. This month, WallE and I got our first box shipped to Whiskey and Waffles HQ. Unfortunately, WallE and I never learned the basics of sharing when growing up so we decided that we needed to battle it out “Live” through the power of the internet for all the items within our Loot Crate.

Check out the Loot Crate War in full effect below as WallE and I go head to head in a series of games of chance and games of skill over the items contained in our Loot Crate. Every month, WallE and I intend on battling it out over the precious contents because, let’s face it, sharing is for losers.

If you can’t share and need your own Loot Crate, make sure to head to to the Loot Crate website and use the promo code “whiskeyandwaffles” to get 10% off your subscription.

I recently wrote about Loot Crate, the company that is supplying geeks and gamers with a box of swag every month. To find out first hand whether the subscription service lives up to the hype, I got the July crate to review.

Part of the fun of the crate is definitely the mystery. I was nearly giddy with excitement when opening it, like a kid on Christmas morning. The first thing I saw upon unboxing was Star Wars earbuds. Immediately I knew I was in for a good haul. Next came a Thor Pez dispenser and then a Sonic the Hedgehog air freshener, which has a pleasing floral scent to it.

As I progressed, the crate’s theme became clear. Whether to coincide with Geek Week on YouTube (August 4-11) or VidCon 2013 (August 1-3) or because popular web series Video Game High School (VGHS) began its second season on July 26th, this crate was perfectly themed around VGHS. Included was the entire first season of the show on DVD and a set of buttons portraying the different schools (e.g. Adventure and Discovery or Speed and Control).