Munchkin Big Box was a historic event for us, made possible only by your support! Despite some significant shipping issues, our team and partners moved mountains to deliver Munchkin Big Box to over 9,000 backers and late pledges worldwide.
The Munchkin Big Box and Loot Box, exclusive to backers of this campaign, contained an amazing assortment of high-quality Munchkin swag and accessories to go with over 700 cards. We’re very proud of how this came together, and we want to thank our long-time manufacturing partner, GPI, for their assistance in creating everything you received.
Big Wins for the Big Box
As we mentioned earlier, the Munchkin Big Boxwas full of new records for us. This campaign attracted over 9,000 backers, more than 65% higher than any of our previous campaigns! We received comments and requests from backers to offer as many Munchkin add-ons as possible, and boy, did you show up for them. All told, we shipped out over 45,000 items to ~9,000 people. This averages about five items each, but not every backer was the same; some supporters dug deep and selected more than 30 add-ons from the store! And, not surprisingly, these were the most challenging to ship.
We also saw a lot of great feedback from those who had never held a Colossal D10. We said it was big – and we weren’t joking. Make sure you’re keeping that thing away from fragile items and properly using it as bragging rights at your next game!
Ouch!
We have a lot to be proud of with Munchkin Big Box, but nothing is perfect, and planning can only take you so far. We encountered some bumps along the way, and it’s essential to acknowledge them and improve going forward.
Throughout the Big Box campaign, we sought to find new ways to give munchkins exactly what they want . . . everything! We rolled out 20 stretch goals during the campaign, offering both upgrades (such as wooden Meeples) and all-new items (such as playmats and an art book). As you might expect, perfecting and manufacturing these new additions ate into the timing budget of our original estimates. Instead of fulfillment beginning in late 2024/early 2025, we were only just finishing manufacturing. . .
U.S. fulfillment for Big Box began in June 2025 and was completed in August, while international fulfillment started in July and proceeded through December. Unfortunately, the process took much longer than any of us expected, and we learned several lessons about both large and complex fulfillments. We also heard some feedback about the Fulfillment Update Thread. We wanted this thread to serve as a one-stop resource for the current status of fulfillment, and we appreciate the feedback we received from backers.
Munchkin Big Box Extra Items
Now that fulfillment has concluded, we’re in a better position to compile the final totals for the remaining extra items. We will then provide another update that includes a link to Warehouse 23, where Munchkin Big Box backers can browse through a limited selection of remaining inventory, such as a 200-pack of clear Munchkin Sleeves, the Five Playmat Set, Jumbo d6 Dice Set, and a few more items just for backers!
Thank you and as always, if you have any questions, please leave a comment below or visit our help site and send us a message.
- Darryll
And Now, A Note From Steve
Thank you, everyone, for making this such an awesome project. It's everything I dreamed of, and more. John knocked the art out of the park, the editorial and production staff gave it their best, and the support was overwhelming. A shout-out to BackerKit, too, for their good advice and hard work!
As you probably know, we're taking Munchkin into a second edition this year. It will still be the game you know, but it will start faster and finish a lot faster. But since you supported Big Box, one of your first questions is, "Did Steve just obsolete my whole collection?"
Short answer is NO.
Longer answer is NO, NO, NO!
Complete answer is that only one card, plus its variants – "Curse: Change Sex" – is truly obsoleted. Everything else you have is playable, and we've made up a guide for that. If you want to use your old card collection while taking advantage of the new, faster rules, you sure can. Your play mats are still good.
And the Second Edition crowdfund has something just for you, the Big Box owners. It's the Big Box Upgrade Set. It's going to provide the upgrade guide, two copies of the Second Edition rules, replacements for 50+ cards that were changed in important ways, a sheet of coins (yes, Gold Pieces are real now), and reference cards. And it's going to be cheap. It won't be going to stores; it's only part of the crowdfund. If you have it, you don't actually NEED the new edition. (We hope you want it anyway. We're not idiots. But we think the best way to sunset the first edition is to make sure you can play it as long and well as you like.)
Thanks again. See you at Gen Con for the release, I hope!
**Note: The most recent fulfillment update (11/18/25) is posted as a comment and pinned to the top. This ensures a history of updates while also working to reduce e-mail spam to backers.**
Hello,
As you may have read in the update from SJ yesterday, we will be more diligent in providing updates on our fulfillment progress for the remaining pledges. Please note that the updates may not contain new information; however, we will continue to update the information on a more regular basis.
=============
Date: 7/11/2025
United States: 82% Complete
The U.S. fulfillment house has put their heads together and come up with a schedule to ship all U.S. orders by July 25. They report that the planned shipping schedule has been updated; they will ship to addresses that are furthest away from their location first, allowing all packages the best chance of arriving by the end of this month.
United Kingdom & European Union: 0% Complete.
The pallet discussion has been nudged to the top tier of that shipper.
32% of pledges are scheduled to begin shipping soon.
Australia & New Zealand: 81% complete
These are being fulfilled from Warehouse 23, and we’re nearly wrapped up.
Canada: 0% complete
Canadian fulfillment will begin once Australia & New Zealand have been shipped.
Rest of World:100% Complete
We have shipped all orders from countries that are not reflected above.
=============
Future updates will be found below as a reply to this update. We will pin the most recent update to make the newest information easy to find, without losing access to past updates. We’ll be back on Monday with fresh info!
If you have any questions, please leave a comment below or contact us on our help site.
This is literally an update . . . we are in the middle of a bad situation here, not at its end. As of now we’ve got something worth passing along, but there will be more.
This is also a big apology. As I assume everybody knows already, some Big Box got into the distribution chain before all the backers were even shipped. Not just W23. And we didn’t have an immediate answer for what was going on! Our rep at the fulfillment house went on vacation and . . . you see where this is going, right? It’s been a week since our last update, because we had no data. We knew we had a mess but we couldn’t even get a return call about its size or shape.
How did the early shipment even happen? It was a right hand/left hand thing. The fulfillment house didn’t come close to meeting its original projection for shipping to backers, or let us know how behind they were, but they shipped to distributors on the original schedule. And we put it on W23 when they shipped to us, which was purely our own failure. Arrrrgh!
At least further shipments to distributors have stopped, so we have quit making the problem worse.
As of yesterday afternoon, our fulfillment rep is back in the office, and he returned my call. Hallelujah. He says that 82% of the domestic backers have been shipped. This makes it sound better than it really is. They did the easy ones first. The remaining 18% unfulfilled are the more complex orders (so the more you backed us, the farther back in their queue you are - which is nuts - and one thing I’m going to expect, on further projects, is that that be fixed). I am expecting a call from higher up in their organization to tell me what they are doing to speed things up, and when we can REALLY expect the last domestic order to go out.
Even more aggravating, he told me that the pallets of overseas orders are still sitting on the warehouse dock because the (domestic) fulfillment house “cannot get a reply” from their overseas counterparts. I don’t know how hard they have tried, and I’m not sure why they can’t ship until they get that reply. I asked them today, in pretty direct terms, to try a lot harder, and WE have started calling, as well.
. . . You will have noticed that I’m not naming names. I won’t do so until or unless I feel that someone has been literally fraudulent, unspeakably lazy, or just plain dumb about fulfilling our order, which is YOUR order. If you’re going to be forgiving, thank you very much, and if you’re going to be mad, be mad at us, because we chose these companies.
So what are we going to do?
- We’re going to be checking fulfillment progress daily. I am sure this will be an aggravation to the contractors. Sorry about that, contractors. Y’all made us do it. - We’re going to go back and look at why we chose these contractors, what the alternatives were, and what guarantees we’d need if we used them again. There are alternatives. (There are about a million companies competing for fulfillment contracts. It seems that perhaps a dozen of them have actual experience. I typed another sentence here and then deleted it; you’ll never know what I made myself not say out loud.) - We will not resume shipments to distributors or Amazon until (at least) the North American orders have been shipped and those for the rest of the world are on the water. - W23 shows as “sold out” because we came to a screeching halt with sales there, not because we have none to ship. - As of today, I intend to ship Big Box to Gen Con. There is a future in which fulfillment continues to go so badly that we don’t feel we can even sell it there. I hope that future does not come. - We’re going to TRY to learn the lesson “don’t put so many extras in a project.” It’s hard to be restrained when everybody is BEGGING for those extras! But all those extras led to extra time for fulfillment, which worsened the mess.
Some people have suggested that we do some sort of extra gift for the aggrieved backers. Been thinking about that one. I’m not going to try to judge who is justly aggrieved, or send out some little tchotchke and say “We good now, right?” If a meaningful idea presents itself, I’m all ears.
I expect better communication now from our contractors, every day. And if we don’t get it, we can come on here and say so. That will give you better communication too.
Again, I’m sorry. Angry and sorry. We are doing what we can to sort this out.
We want to address the backers we've heard from regarding Big Box being available on Warehouse 23 before all of you have received your pledges. We do understand that this is beyond frustrating, especially since our original promise was not to release this title until all the pledges were fulfilled.
We clearly miscalculated how long it would take to fulfill this project. And we aren’t doing it all from Austin; this project was much too big for us to handle here in our little office. Some of the parts and pieces were subcontracted to a couple of other entities, and we didn’t receive the follow-through that we had hoped for. Our intention is not to throw anyone under the proverbial bus here. Most of us have worked incredibly hard to get your pledges out to you as soon as possible.
Please remember, and I hope it is some consolation, that the Big Boxes available in retail are only the Big Box; the exclusive Loot Box is not included for anyone who did not pledge for the project. Those are reserved for you, our backers.
We sincerely apologize to those of you who are upset about this development; we assure you that we are working as quickly as possible, and are continuing to poke our outside contractors to do the same.
We know many of you are eager for an update on your Munchkin Big Box pledges, and we appreciate your continued patience. We're committed to keeping you informed as we work through our largest crowdfunding project to date.
Our Commitment to Crowdfunding
For over 40 years, Steve Jackson Games has been dedicated to bringing great games to life. We're proud to have successfully delivered over 80 crowdfunding projects to our backers, and that commitment remains as strong as ever. While this project is taking longer than we initially anticipated, we want to assure you that our team is working incredibly hard to get your Munchkin Big Box pledges into your hands. We've encountered some unavoidable global hurdles related to trade and tariffs, however, which have particularly impacted the large-scale shipments. These factors, unfortunately, have created some bumps in the road, but we're actively navigating them.
Fulfillment Progress
Munchkin fans comprise a vast community; many of you selected extensive add-ons (Thank you!), which add complexity to the shipping process. This means that if your pledge includes a significant number of add-ons, your shipment might be among the later waves. We understand that this can be frustrating, but please know that we're steadily making progress on every single pledge.
Here's a regional breakdown:
U.S. Backers: As of our last report, roughly 65% of U.S. pledges have shipped. Our team is continuing to process orders. First out the door were the pledges with no add-ons, and then we started on the more complex orders. For those with many add-ons, we kindly ask for a bit more patience as we work through the remaining, more intricate shipments. We are getting there!
EU/UK Backers: We're actively collaborating with our partners to initiate fulfillment for the EU and UK. The Munchkin Big Boxinventory is currently located in the Netherlands, and our regional team will begin shipping these items soon.
AU/NZ Backers: Shipments for Australia and New Zealand will be dispatched from our warehouse in Austin. We are currently awaiting the arrival of this inventory from our main warehouse in Georgia, which will follow the completion of US fulfillment. We're also aware of discussions regarding the local availability of Big Box in your region. Our Australian distributor acquired a quantity of our retail Munchkin Big Box, making it available ahead of our planned release. Please note that these retail copies do not include any additional campaign items, such as the exclusive Loot Box. We recognize how disappointing it can be to see the game available elsewhere while awaiting your pledge, and we are working as quickly as possible to fulfill your shipments.
Canadian Backers: Fulfillment for Canadian pledges will commence following the completion of US shipping.
Rest of World (ROW): We've already started shipping some packages for ROW backers from our Austin warehouse, and we expect all of them to be on their way by the end of next week.
Looking Ahead
We appreciate your incredible support and understanding as we navigate this massive undertaking. We will continue to provide updates as fulfillment milestones are reached. Thank you for being such an integral part of the Munchkin community.
If you have any questions, please leave a comment below or contact us directly through our help site.
We know you're eagerly awaiting your Big Box, and that clear communication is paramount. If our last update left you with unanswered questions, we want to address that now with additional information about the Munchkin Big Box fulfillment.
First, we want to provide some context regarding our fulfillment strategy. The recent volatility in global trade, including significant tariffs on our initial shipments, has reiterated the need for a responsible approach to ensure we can fulfill all international orders sustainably and effectively. This is why we are prioritizing a phased rollout, starting with the US and then moving to other regions with careful planning.
United States: We're making good progress on US fulfillment and are currently about 50% complete. You should continue to see shipping notifications as we work through the remaining orders.
United Kingdom & European Union: We have some positive news here! We're on track to begin fulfilling approximately 75% of UK/EU orders in the near future. The remaining 25% involve orders with more intricate combinations or specific requirements that will take extra time to prepare. We're addressing these separately to ensure accuracy.
Canada, Australia/New Zealand, and Rest of World: Fulfillment in these regions will begin once most of the US shipments are out the door.
Thank you for your incredible support. We're committed to getting your rewards to you and will continue to provide updates as we have them.
If you have any questions, please comment below or leave us a help request.
Munchkin Big Box was a historic event for us, made possible only by your support! Despite some significant shipping issues, our team and partners moved mountains to deliver Munchkin Big Box to over 9,000 backers and late pledges worldwide.
The Munchkin Big Box and Loot Box, exclusive to backers of this campaign, contained an amazing assortment of high-quality Munchkin swag and accessories to go with over 700 cards. We’re very proud of how this came together, and we want to thank our long-time manufacturing partner, GPI, for their assistance in creating everything you received.
Big Wins for the Big Box
As we mentioned earlier, the Munchkin Big Boxwas full of new records for us. This campaign attracted over 9,000 backers, more than 65% higher than any of our previous campaigns! We received comments and requests from backers to offer as many Munchkin add-ons as possible, and boy, did you show up for them. All told, we shipped out over 45,000 items to ~9,000 people. This averages about five items each, but not every backer was the same; some supporters dug deep and selected more than 30 add-ons from the store! And, not surprisingly, these were the most challenging to ship.
We also saw a lot of great feedback from those who had never held a Colossal D10. We said it was big – and we weren’t joking. Make sure you’re keeping that thing away from fragile items and properly using it as bragging rights at your next game!
Ouch!
We have a lot to be proud of with Munchkin Big Box, but nothing is perfect, and planning can only take you so far. We encountered some bumps along the way, and it’s essential to acknowledge them and improve going forward.
Throughout the Big Box campaign, we sought to find new ways to give munchkins exactly what they want . . . everything! We rolled out 20 stretch goals during the campaign, offering both upgrades (such as wooden Meeples) and all-new items (such as playmats and an art book). As you might expect, perfecting and manufacturing these new additions ate into the timing budget of our original estimates. Instead of fulfillment beginning in late 2024/early 2025, we were only just finishing manufacturing. . .
U.S. fulfillment for Big Box began in June 2025 and was completed in August, while international fulfillment started in July and proceeded through December. Unfortunately, the process took much longer than any of us expected, and we learned several lessons about both large and complex fulfillments. We also heard some feedback about the Fulfillment Update Thread. We wanted this thread to serve as a one-stop resource for the current status of fulfillment, and we appreciate the feedback we received from backers.
Munchkin Big Box Extra Items
Now that fulfillment has concluded, we’re in a better position to compile the final totals for the remaining extra items. We will then provide another update that includes a link to Warehouse 23, where Munchkin Big Box backers can browse through a limited selection of remaining inventory, such as a 200-pack of clear Munchkin Sleeves, the Five Playmat Set, Jumbo d6 Dice Set, and a few more items just for backers!
Thank you and as always, if you have any questions, please leave a comment below or visit our help site and send us a message.
- Darryll
And Now, A Note From Steve
Thank you, everyone, for making this such an awesome project. It's everything I dreamed of, and more. John knocked the art out of the park, the editorial and production staff gave it their best, and the support was overwhelming. A shout-out to BackerKit, too, for their good advice and hard work!
As you probably know, we're taking Munchkin into a second edition this year. It will still be the game you know, but it will start faster and finish a lot faster. But since you supported Big Box, one of your first questions is, "Did Steve just obsolete my whole collection?"
Short answer is NO.
Longer answer is NO, NO, NO!
Complete answer is that only one card, plus its variants – "Curse: Change Sex" – is truly obsoleted. Everything else you have is playable, and we've made up a guide for that. If you want to use your old card collection while taking advantage of the new, faster rules, you sure can. Your play mats are still good.
And the Second Edition crowdfund has something just for you, the Big Box owners. It's the Big Box Upgrade Set. It's going to provide the upgrade guide, two copies of the Second Edition rules, replacements for 50+ cards that were changed in important ways, a sheet of coins (yes, Gold Pieces are real now), and reference cards. And it's going to be cheap. It won't be going to stores; it's only part of the crowdfund. If you have it, you don't actually NEED the new edition. (We hope you want it anyway. We're not idiots. But we think the best way to sunset the first edition is to make sure you can play it as long and well as you like.)
Thanks again. See you at Gen Con for the release, I hope!
I received only the "fowl play" add-on, from my 200 dollar pledge, it's been at least a few months since that, is the rest going to arrive any time soon? it's been over 2 years...
before signing offon this kickstarter, can somone please let me know, whats happening to put right the damage to the cthulhu, legend and big box i received? ive emailed yourselves and gamesquest and don't seem to be getting anywhere
Can you please include the new box in the in the "Big Box Upgrade" for the 2nd edition?
It would be nice to update my first edition box which was damaged in shipping and not replaced.....
I think I've read somewhere about some leftover stock of card sleeves that might be available to buy. When and where will that be? Did I miss the opportunity?
I'd like to call dibs on two packs. ;)
