Now that Prerelease weekend is over, the Final Fantasy floodgates are, officially, fully open. Cards and sealed product are out in the wild, and players are starting to share the highs and lows of early pulls with the rest of the internet. One low in particular, unfortunately enough, has come in the form of the MTG Final Fantasy Bundle. While generally a popular, inoffensive product, a quirk of the packaging this time around has left players with a bad taste in their mouths.
Going by appearance alone, the Bundle seems to promise two pricey promos. In practice, this simply isn’t the case. Those buying the Bundle in person have had their expectations crushed. There’s even talk of legal action against Wizards for misrepresenting the Bundle contents. While such drastic action is unlikely to pan out in reality, it’s hard not to sympathize with those feeling swindled on this one.
Dubious Advertising In The MTG Final Fantasy Bundle
The issue with the MTG Final Fantasy Bundle was brought to the attention of the internet by Infinite_Sandwich895, who posted about it on r/mtg on Saturday. In their post, they shared an image of the Bundle packaging, specifically the part promising “Two Traditional Foil Extended-Art Legends.” This is written next to an image of two specific extended-art cards: Sephiroth, Fabled SOLDIER and Lightning, Army of One.
Based on this, Infinite_Sandwich895 assumed the bundle would include both of these cards. If this were the case, the Bundle would be an absolutely fantastic deal. While their hefty current price tags are definitely inflated by pre-sale hype, Sephiroth and Lightning will still probably be two of the more valuable mythics in the set when the dust settles.
Unfortunately, this was too good to be true. It turns out that the extended-art legends included in the Bundle are random, and not fixed. The pool isn’t even restricted to rare and mythic legends from the set. As several players pointed out in the comments, uncommons are fair game in this slot. While some did hit the jackpot and land Sephiroth and other high-value mythics, most got burned with low-value pulls.
This isn’t an unusual structure for Magic: The Gathering product. The issue in this case was how it was presented. The packaging doesn’t say “random,” nor does it imply that the legends shown won’t be the ones included. There’s an argument that such high-value includes would be ridiculous in a product like this, but as Infinite_Sandwich895 points out in their original post, we got The One Ring as a guaranteed Bundle promo not too long ago.
Righteous Fury
As you’d expect, MTG players are not best pleased about the Final Fantasy Bundle fiasco. Infinite_Sandwich895 noted that they felt “a bit ripped off” after buying a Bundle, and others in the comments echoed this sentiment. WolfieWuff slammed the Bundle for making use of “ridiculously deceptive advertising,” while fluffynuckels called it “deliberately misleading.”
It wasn’t just players who fell for the ruse, either. Some in the comments noted that their Local Game Store had been taken in by it as well. In cdanhaug’s case, it sounds like an honest mistake, whereas in DistinctCandidate578’s it seems like a store is leveraging the misleading packaging to make unearned sales. Neither of these scenarios is ideal for a new product, especially one with as many eyes on it as Final Fantasy.
There was even some talk about legal action in the comments. K3OM started a discussion on a potential Unfair Commercial Practices case in Europe, while ResponsibleBison8933 mentioned a class action lawsuit. We’re no legal experts, but it seems very unlikely that either of these things will pan out. The fact that players are talking about them, however, speaks to the sheer anger caused by this packaging.
The fact that the online product description for the Bundle states that the extended-art cards are drawn from a pool of 161 legends does alleviate the issue a little. Wizards could easily have applied the same wording to the physical product, but chose not to. As a result, it’s hard for this not to feel a little shady overall. It may not warrant legal action, but it certainly doesn’t inspire player confidence, either.
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