[Feb 2026] Five Mics Booster Box Manufacturing Update!
February 17, 2026
Happy Lunar New Year! Back with another update on the manufacturing process for The Genesis, our first booster box for Five Mics: The Hip-Hop Trading Card Game!
Thank you to every person that’s been waiting patiently. I acknowledge that this process has been painfully long. Even the manufacturer recognizes that the production delays we’ve been experiencing are not normal and apologizes.
C’est la vie. Nonetheless, we’re still 100% committed to delivering what we promised, so we will continue to proceed through the obstacles.
That said, great news: we got the 2nd booster box sample over the weekend, and the quality came out much stronger than v1!
There are still a few items that we need to lock in 100% on before feeling comfortable giving the greenlight for mass production. In transparency, I want to share with you some of the big issues currently stopping us from “go time”, so that you can have a better understanding of the process.
Inconsistency in card color & size
The cards inside the booster packs have a slightly deeper color saturation than what we currently sell in our starter deck, which can be noticeable when shuffling cards together.
Similarly, the booster box cards are slightly larger by ~0.5mm – small yet noticeable difference, especially when sorting through your cards. (Mind you, in v1 the cards were much smaller / Japanese-sized, à la Yu-Gi-Oh, instead of US Playing Card standard).
Booster pack card order
This issue was a surprise to us, because the order was actually correct in the 1st sample. However, in the 2nd sample the cards were packed in reverse order inside the booster packs (e.g. the Common cards were in the back instead of the front).
Human error on the manufacturer side, but still an example of how the production process can end up taking longer than it should, even when communication has been clear.
Card quality control while printing
We upgraded the card quality after the 1st sample to have more durable card stock. However, with this new card stock, we noticed some irremovable white flakes on some of the cards, which is not good (imagine your super rare card immediately looking damaged?!).
We’re looking into why this happened and how to prevent this issue again before mass printing.
There are a couple other small things, but above are the biggest ones I wanted to share with you.
You might be thinking, “Wow, these are really small things / why are you being nitpicky?” But, I would disagree: these issues are a very big deal to me. I don’t believe in doing anything half-heartedly, and I don’t want to cut corners to be speedy at the expense of quality.
Our goal is to deliver you a high-quality game that you can play, collect, and value with pride. We may be a small indie team, but the vision is BIG. And we will ensure that we reach it.
We’re grateful to have you on the journey with us, and we’ll continue to keep you posted as things unfold. In the meantime:
If you haven’t yet, join our discord and be part of the convo: https://discord.fivemics.io/join
Grab yourself some Five Mics Starter Decks or preorder The Genesis at our online shop: https://shop.fivemics.io/
We're almost there!
