Date Box Club Subscription Box Review + Coupon – August 2017

Date Box Club is a monthly subscription that delivers you G-rated date night ideas and everything you need to complete them.

Date Box Club sent us this box for review purposes. (Check out the review process post to learn more about how we review boxes.)

The Subscription Box: Date Box Club

The Cost: $35.00 per month + $1.99 shipping

The Products: Everything you need for a creative date night activity. The activities are designed for couples in committed relationships but are not romantic or “adult” in nature.

Ships to: US. Shipping is free.

Check out all of our Date Box Club reviews more date night boxes the Lifestyle Subscription Box Directory!

Keep Track of Your Subscriptions: Add this box to your subscription list or wishlist!

This envelope sits on top of the blue-paper-wrapped activities in the box. Inside, there's information about the theme of the box, plus directions as to how to use the items in the box to create a fun night in.

The theme is "Game Night" with a hint of "#throwback fun." My partner Alistair and I weren't super wowed by last month's craft project, but games sounded pretty cool. I was happy that there were some conversation-starting activities in here, too. (The question cards were definitely our favorite part of the July box!)

There's a Spotify playlist, too! It's not the coolest music ever (I can be a bit picky about my tunes), but I did like this month's list better than last month's. There was even an awesome Florence and the Machine cover of "Stand by Me" that made me stop what I was doing and hit "Save" right then and there. It runs the gamut of pop music genres, so it's a nice crowd-pleasing thing to have in the background.

Cranstacio Mix - Value $1.00?

Every box includes a treat, and this month it was this little packet of dried cranberries and pistachios. I'm not a huge craisin person, but the pistachios were fun to munch on. I'm not sure if this was quite enough for two, though. The packet is only about as big as a single serving travel pack of trail mix might be (like the kind you'd pick up at the convenience store). So we went a little off script—Alistair made Dark and Stormy cocktails to round out our game night indulgences. Yum!

YamSlam - Value $18.29 on Amazon

According to the info card, once we were all set up with our snacks, we were ready to start playing YamSlam! Apparently, the company spent a lot of time trial-running different games in order to find just the right one for this box, and YamSlam beat 'em all out. The game is a lot like Yahtzee, says the card, which is cool and helpful to know... if you've ever played Yahtzee before. I... haven't. I know, I know. I was always just too into Boggle to give Yahtzee the attention it deserves!

Luckily, it's a pretty simple game to play. Basically, you roll five dice three times. In the span of those three turns, you want to get one of the YamSlam combinations in the picture of the booklet right up there. (So, for instance, if I get a one, two, and a three in my first roll, I might spend my next two rolls trying to get a four and a five—what's called a "Large Straight".) Some combinations are easier to get than others, and every combination is assigned a point value based on that. When you successfully get one of the combinations, you pick up the corresponding chip. You keep on going back and forth until all the chips are gone, then you count up the point values on the chips you earned to see who won.

We kept the combination page of the booklet open as we played—Alistair used it to strategize about the most probable outcomes, and I used it to identify the highest point value combination before crossing my fingers and hoping for the best. (We balance one another, you see.) I had a streak of early success, but by the fifth or sixth turn, Alistair had a breakout lead that never let up. He also got the lone YamSlam (five of the exact same dice) of the evening, which meant he could pick whatever chip he pleased (a.k.a. the highest value one). I'm not bitter though—the smart thing about this game is that, aside from the hint of probability strategy that you can weave into the process, it's largely about luck. If you're the competitive type, a head-to-head game could ruin the whole night. This game is mostly chance, and it's super straightforward. That means less chance of a "that's not even a word!" or "that's not what that rule means!" arguments. (We've all been there, folks.)

Love Token Cards - Value $1.00?

The Date Box Club directions said that as a reward for winning—or, let's be honest, completely crushing me—at YamSlam, Alistair got to pick a "Love Token" card. This handful of little pink cards has a bunch of relatively G-rated "tasks" on them. (Though there is a fill-in-the-blank one and one called "Pleasure Pass" that reads "My choice on what I want." OooOOOoo!)

Alistair got "30 Minute Backrub". I need to brush up on my massage know-how if I'm going to come up with 30 minutes worth, haha! We both thought these little cards were pretty cute. They might have a permanent place on the side-table from now on! I'm giggling over the idea of coming home from a long day and hearing "Hey girl, rough day? Go on and pick yourself out a Loooove Token..."

Mouth Madness - Value $10.00?

So what's the fate of the YamSlam loser, you ask? Well, apart from the 30 minute backrub, I was assigned the task of playing Mouth Madness, a Date Box Club version of a game I've been seeing pop up into my social media feeds a lot lately. I took a guess at the value since it's an exclusive and since there's no official packaging. The basics here are that one player shoves in of the two clear plastic mouth retractors, which holds their lips back like they're getting orthodontic work done. Then, they pick up random cards from the stack and have to make the other player guess what they're saying. The phrases are all full of sounds that basically demand you use your lips, so having to enunciate without them is a wild challenge. For instance, I got "blueberry muffin" as my first card. I also nailed it—Alistair got what I was saying on the first guess! Woohoo! Hooray for diction training in high school theater class!

Of course, everyone's expecting me to post a photo of me in this mouth retractor thing, right? I'm going to spare the internet that horror this time. Alistair took about five different photos of me in my mouth gear, and all of them look like something out of a very low-budget Saw movie. Just picture me in stretch pants and a comfy t-shirt, but with my lips stretched open like I was standing in a wind tunnel.

It's not flattering. (But it is pretty darn funny.)

Throwback Question Tented Card - Value $1.00?

To round out the night, the box included this double-sided set of questions about childhood. The card is actually a little tent that you can prop on the table so that one person sees one side and the other person is looking at the other. As I mentioned, these questions are by far our favorite part of these boxes. I found out about the goofy games Alistair and his older brothers would make up when they were all little. Alistair got to hear all about the music that filled my childhood home (both of my parents are avid musicians, so there was a lot to listen to). We did our share of extrapolating beyond the specific question that was asked, too, so they truly did spark some fun conversation. These aren't questions I'd think to ask him, either, though I'm a curious cat and love to know these sorts of things.

Verdict: I'm not sure if it's because it fits our interests better or because the quality of the activity felt a bit more sophisticated, but we both had a lot of fun with this month's box! YamSlam was a really good pick (we've already talked about wanting to play it again sometime), and while I wasn't wild about the mouth retractor part, that Mouth Madness game definitely got us laughing. The box itself is about $37.00 with shipping, but I only calculated about $30.00 of value for the items inside. That said, I do think there's value in the curation they did (with the plan for the evening, the Spotify playlist, etc.), so $37.00 feels fair (or at least not super pricey). If anything, I think we had just as much fun (and maybe better quality fun, relationship-wise) doing the activities in this box than we would've on a night out to the movies, and we could've spent even more than $37.00 for tickets and snacks between the two of us. So I think it's worth it, especially knowing that we'll probably use some of these items again!

What do you think of the August 2017 Date Box Club?