The Disappearance of Cadet Turner

A little over a year ago, I wrote about The Mysterious Package Company and how it'd be cool if someone did a similar experience around comics. Well, it turns out they either saw my note and acting on it, or they're just thinking along the same lines because debuting next month is The Disappearance of Cadet Turner, their newest experience and one centered around comics!

It's a fair bit different than what I had originally suggested. Instead of getting an inheritance of materials from a long dead comic creator, the mystery is around some comic fans themselves. The official description reads...

The late 80’s, a foster home in Oregon — Two ten-year-olds met and bonded over their shared love of a comic series called Super Star Cadets. The series followed an intergalactic adventuring duo who explore the universe in search of legendary artifacts.

Inspired by the heroes in the comics, Pat and Gretta’s playtime emulated the stories in the comics. They explored places outside the safety of their home, collected strange samples, and kept an audio log of their missions.

On a warm day in September 1987, their adventure took them into the woods, but only one of them came back.

Now, three decades after his strange and sudden disappearance, Gretta is still searching for Pat. She needs your help to find Cadet Turner.

This sounds like a great set-up to me. It's notably different and original relative to their other experiences. I don't know how well the company is doing financially to know if their model is practically replicable but I would love to see more of this type of thing in the future.

I've talked before about how more immersive experiences will become more common and this strikes me as an excellent alternative to, say, a Star Wars style theme park. Even though The Mysterious Package Company's experiences aren't cheap, they're a fair bit more reasonably priced -- both for consumers as well as companies -- than building a small city like a Disney has done. Something like this could be an option for smaller publishers as a marketing strategy. It's certainly a little unconventional compared to historical marketing techniques but I think that's what necessary to rise above the noise any more.

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