Do you really care about the brand of lure bass fishing bait that you're throwing? I ask the question because the team at MONSTERBASS works really hard to build partnerships with brands like BOOYAH, Strike King and Z-MAN and put together the best possible boxes that we can. But does it even matter or could we fill the box with any old brand?

I paid full price for one of the other subscription boxes on the market, only to open it and see that it was full of brands I've never heard of. Their website says I'll get brand name baits but that's not what I received. TO MAKE MATTERS WORSE... the baits had fake UPC codes on them. FAKE UPC codes! Why would someone put fake UPC codes on baits? Honestly as a consumer I felt taken advantage of. Ripped off. I paid full price for a box of brand name baits and received what appear to be made up brands with fake UPC codes. Should I give them the benefit of the doubt and assume it's a mistake? I would have but then I opened another one of their boxes... and guess what I found? Another brand I had never heard of and another fake UPC code! Does any of this even matter or am I making more out of this than I should? I mean I get that most baits will catch fish, but if you're just buying a bait from some factory without testing it, how do you know if the components are good? How do you know if it'll run true out of the box? So I ask the question... does brand matter to you?

I apologize for the rant and i'd love your opinion.

Thank you.

Rick

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Video Transcript

Rick Patri:
Hey, guys. This is Rick and I got one question for you. Does brand matter? What do I mean by that is, when you go to buy fishing lures, does brand matter? Or do you just go looking for a jerk bait and you don't really care? You'll buy any brand, you just like the way that it looks? I'm going to apologize in advance. I'm probably going to go on a rant. I subscribe to all my competitors' boxes, I pay full price for them, and I just got one of them and I totally feel ripped off. But maybe I'm overthinking it, and maybe I'm not as smart as I think I am. And maybe I really don't know as much about fishing as I think I do.

Rick Patri:
My team works really hard. So, for those of you that aren't familiar with MONSTERBASS, we put together, we handpick baits based upon the area of the country where you live and fish and we make sure that they're seasonal. So I'm not sending you topwater baits in the middle of January, right? And I'm not sending the guy in Florida the same baits as I'm sending the same guy in Michigan. The other thing that we do really well is we theme our boxes. We're going to have topwater month where every bait in the box will be a topwater bait. And we're going to give you a video on each one so that you can become a better topwater angler.

Rick Patri:
Because listen, everybody else just sends random stuff. MONSTERBASS is the only company that themes their boxes with a goal of helping you become a better angler and catch more fish. My team works really hard to get your brands like Z-Man, BOOYAH, Zoom, Strike King, YUM. I paid full price for one of my competitors' boxes, I'm not going to tell you who it is. I opened it up, and their website tells me that I'm going to get brand name baits, so that's what I expect. I open it up, and 90% of the stuff is brands I've never heard of.

Rick Patri:
I've been in the industry 10 years. I've been to like eight Bassmaster classics. I think I've seen it all. But today I saw something that I just can't even believe that I'm seeing. Actually, I'm not going to show you that one because that one, you'll be able to see the brand name. Like I said, and maybe I'm overthinking this, but my belief is that you, the consumer and the angler, not only do you want the best baits for the time of year that you're fishing, but you also want the best brands. But maybe brand doesn't matter because my competition, who by the way sells more boxes than me. So again, this is why I'm thinking, maybe I have no clue. Well, they used to sell more boxes than me. Now we sell more than them.

Rick Patri:
They fill the box full of brands no one's ever heard of. Now it's really easy to do that. You call a factory in China and you say, "Give me a square bill, a medium diver, a jerkbait, a spinner bait, a buzz bait." They say, "Great, $0.70 each. Here's all the artwork, you just made up five brands." I slapped a $9 price tag on it and hey, I'm guessing that there's a segment of the population that doesn't really care about that. Because I know it's going to happen.

Rick Patri:
90% of the unboxing videos that you see, what happens? They go through them all, they add up the price. They say hey, this one's worth 40 bucks, this one's worth $43. Well this one must be better, right? Some kid in Oklahoma stands up and tells me that my box sucks because he compared it to somebody else's. Meanwhile, their box is full of made up MSRPs and brands no one's ever heard of. Whereas, mine's full of the best brands in the industry. But maybe that doesn't matter. Maybe it doesn't matter.

Rick Patri:
So I'll get back to what I was saying. Like again, maybe it doesn't matter because here's, there were four baits. I mean, four baits that I received. Do you guys know what a UPC code is? You've seen it on everything from your milk to whatever. The UPC code is a series and numbers and everything designed for retailers so they can track things, sell things. Let me see if I can... Let me show you this one. I think this one will work. I don't know if you can see that. It's all zeros. It's a fake UPC code. What's worse is, all four of these have some form of a fake UPC code. They got the PO number on it, but a fake UPC code.

Rick Patri:
Why would someone go through the effort of putting a fake UPC code on the product? Is it because most consumers have no idea the difference between a fake one and a real one? I think so. Why would you go through the effort of putting a fake UPC code on a product? Mind you, when you go to Google any of these, you can't find them anywhere on the planet. It's like Area 51, it's classified.

Rick Patri:
It says on their website I'm going to get baits from the best brands, but what, I got to be lucky to get one of those? Because my box was full of, in my opinion, my box was full of... But maybe brand doesn't matter. Maybe I'm overthinking the heck out of it, because you know what? I could make a crap ton of money. If all I cared about was making money, then I would just go to China and I would just buy all of these baits. Fill the box this way. I just can't... I've seen it all now with this whole fake UPC codes. Literally, it's all zeros. And the barcode that's on the back is exactly the same, for two of these. The other ones are different.

Rick Patri:
All right, I need your help. Comment down below. Does brand matter? Does it matter to you, or would you just be happy getting a box full of random brands that... I don't know. I don't know if they run true out of the box. I don't know if they have good hooks. I don't know, whatever. All right. None of us are going to get this eight minutes of our lives back, so thank you in advance for putting up with this. I would love to hear what your thoughts are. Please comment down below and let me know, does brand matter? Have a great day.