The Master Collection - An expansion of The Time Lord Collection: Because Villains Drink Coffee Too
The Master Collection required special handling, particularly after several prototypes attempted to hypnotise our quality control team. Karl spent three days staring at a Delgado Master mug before Janet snapped him out of it by dropping a stack of tin foil hats on his desk. Rest assured, this only affects the weak-willed. (Fingers crossed.)
The first draft of the Simm Master mug developed an inexplicable tendency to tap rhythmically on tables spilling the contents everywhere. We've passed that over to the Joke Department on Alzarius, they like that sort of thing as wedding presents.
The Gomez "Missy" design started off as a potential best-seller, with her stern Nanny stare keeping the Riff-Raff at bay. Once again Karl tried to cut corners and production costs by using Sentient Clay from an unknown source. We arrived at work the day after the first print run and everyone's desks had been moved into "more aesthetically pleasing positions" according to the mysterious notes stapled to the desks. One of the test group insisted her Missy mug had ordered her other mugs to "kneel" overnight. Note: Sentient Clay will no longer be used unless expressly indicated.
We reluctantly left out the Peter Pratt and Geoffrey Beevers incarnations after three designers refused to work on the prototypes, claiming they could "hear whispers from the decay." Hard to argue when the test mugs kept turning milk sour instantly.
Special Editions
The "Donna Doctor" mug was a late addition, created after our night cleaner (who insists his name isn't Wilf) heard singing from our storage room. The voices, apparently, of an Ood Chorus. The mug comes with a unique guarantee: it will never, ever let your coffee get cold when used in The TARDIS.
Production Oddities
Yet again, Karl was the centre of attention. After his little jaunt into Victorian Cardiff he fell into the shipping container headed for the UNIT gift shop. He survived for two days until the box was opened by eating packing pellets. (They're made of corn starch, so he's lost a bit of weight, but looks good for it.)
Glug insists the collection's relative disaster-free development is due to her "temporal stabilisation technique," which mostly involved spreading salt in a circle around the design department and playing Tom Baker interviews on a loop.
The biggest challenge came during quality testing when we discovered that if you place any Doctor mug next to its corresponding Master mug, occasionally both begin to vibrate intensely. Janet's solution? Slide one of our ceramic coasters between each mug. Problem solved!
The Launch
The collection initially launched last month at the 111th Comic Con Magla (Magla is a planet that is actually an 8,000-mile-wide amoeba with a crusty shell), where we sold out within hours despite the temporary wormhole that opened near our booth (unrelated to our products, that's our story ans we are sticking to it.).
Available now at soapbox169 and select Starlords locations across time and space. Warning: Mugs occasionally talk to each other when stored together. The 13th Doctor and Fugitive Doctor mugs should be kept separate to prevent existential crisis.
Coming Soon: Our "TARDIS Interior" travel mug collection – Because every coffee deserves to be bigger on the inside! (It's never gonna work but we'll give it our best.)