The Fleeting Joy Of Finding USPS Spider-Man Packages

Thwippin' in the sunlight, thwippin' in the moonlight, having a wonderful time.

While grabbing some shipping material the other day, I was greeted by a variety I had never seen before: USPS Priority Flat-Rate boxes emblazoned with Spider-Man's beautiful visage. Given my lifelong love of the old Webhead, running into him unexpectedly is generally cause for celebration. I didn't go as far as breaking into dance, but the "I need to grab these, photograph them, and talk about them on the internet!" urge was definitely sparked. Here are just a few examples of the onslaught of pictures that ensued:

Variety 1, in all its slightly misshapen glory.

The From/To side even has the spider emblem. Nice touch!

Variety 2: Electric Boogaloo.

I was all set to bask in their glory full-stop here on Castle Geek-Skull, but then I looked into the tie-in's history. Of course, it was initially meant to coincide with the theatrical release of The Amazing Spider-Man 2 back in May. I suppose I'd stumbled upon old stock that my local post office had only just gotten around to putting out. As I went further, I noticed the advertised URL simply redirected to USPS holiday themed boxes. Unfortunately, I'd found myself firmly in "old news" territory.

I then found out a big chunk of the attention their proposed "AmazingUSPS" hashtag received was unfortunately negative. The campaign quickly became affixed to a story in which a USPS mail courier dismissively chunked a hard drive delivery at its recipient's garage door. Oops.

It's hard to remain as excited about my USPS Spider-Man package discovery knowing that the intended promotion had such an unfortunate layer. While it doesn't take away from the "hey, neat!" vibes of the initial find, the wind has definitely been taken out of my sails. But hey, these are still pretty cool as far as free shipping boxes go. At least there's that.

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