The 5 Most Popular Magicbox Experiences for Christmas

Like many digital and eCommerce businesses, Magicbox tracks what attracts attention on our site, so we can give you more of what you love. Based on clicks across devices, we’re here to tell you the experiences on our site that people explore the most. These might make the best Christmas or birthday gifts. You don’t have to choose, so don’t worry if you’re not sure which of the 5 might appeal, the lucky receiver of your gift gets to explore and choose their own excitement.

Experience #5: Osaka Gastronomy at Bincho

Imagine yourself surrounded by the savoury smell and crackle of food crisping on Bincho’s yakitori-ya, flavours bursting in your mouth as you bite down on a mouthful from your full-course dinner for two. This is exactly what our site visitors! This is the fifth most-reviewed experience on our site.

For about 200 years until 1868, in the Edo period of Japan, meat-eating was a big no-no as the official religion was Buddhism. Even the sumptuous scent of cooking meat was considered unseemly. Once the next period came in (Meiji) and rules started loosening up, chicken and other meats began to be cooked over charcoal on open air barbecues. They were painted with a very salty-sweet sauce that, with the powerful charcoal smell, was thought to mask the odour of the cooking. So, our taste buds can thank Japan’s sensitive noses for the deliciousness of yakitori.

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OSAKA GASTRONOMIC EXPERIENCE

Experience #4: Harmony Body Massage at Element Wellness Group

Choose from a range of kneading techniques that will keep your body relaxed, strong, and in tip-top shape. You can explore Chinese Medicine (TCM) Tui Na techniques, Deep Tissue, and Swedish massage. Our website guests must be a bit run down by the daily grind, because many of them visit this experience to visualise a fluid and healthy body.

Tui Na is almost 4000 years old, proven by some old bones that show signs of the technique being used. This makes it the oldest massage technique in the world. It is one of the four branches of Chinese Medicine, which also include acupuncture, Qi Gong, and herbal medicine. One story has it that Mao Zedong was not a big fan of Tui Na until the Long March of 1934-1935. No drugs, anaesthetics, or surgery was available on the March, so the traditional Chinese doctors stepped forward to treat the injuries successfully and made their reputation with Mao. Swedish massage on the other hand was developed by a Swedish instructor to treat an elbow injury in the 1830s.

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HARMONY BODY MASSAGE EXPERIENCE

Experience #3: The Fragment Room

This experience lets people break taboos and work out their anger by smashing old bottles with baseball bats, samurai swords, and spanners. The taboo must be titillating because this one gets a lot of interest.

The first Rage Rooms were opened in Japan in 2008 and were a product of the global financial crisis. The Japanese took out their frustration at how the crisis was impacting their lives and livelihoods by going to a van and smashing things against slabs. They have since evolved into more permanent digs. Having spread to places like the UK and Argentina, The Fragment Room is Singapore’s first Rage Room. Rage Rooms are not substitutes for good anger management and therapy, but they are lots of fun and give you a sense of exhilaration.

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COUPLE’S THERAPY AT THE FRAGMENT ROOM (Article) THE FRAGMENT ROOM EXPERIENCE

So that’s our list of most explored experiences. Here are some of our newest experiences, which haven’t had a chance to make the rankings yet.

Experience #2: Virtual Reality at the Virtual Room

Unlock your sense of wonder as you see an earthrise from the moon and a sunrise over the earth from space. You can take part in the ultimate time travel game involving Ancient Egyptians and archaeology all the way to medieval castles. They even have a new game where you get chased by zombies. What really makes this virtual reality (VR) experience stand out is that you work as a team. You get set up in head sets in different rooms, but solve puzzles together in the virtual world. They also make their own games in their studio in France.

Virtual reality was invented as far back as 1968 by an American computer scientist. It was popularised throughout the 1990’s as the hardware required to run it became more affordable and more widely available, especially smartphones.

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HOW WOULD IT FEEL IF…? A MINDBLOWING VIRTUAL REALITY EXPERIENCE (Article) VIRTUAL ROOM EXPERIENCE

Experience #1: Weekend Brunch for 2 at Artichoke

Bjorn Shen has been dousing our taste buds in irreverent Middle Eastern flavours for almost 10 years. The most popular experience on our site is a weekend trip down to the heritage location of Bjorn’s restaurant, Artichoke, with a glass of bubbly. Bjorn likes to say that Artichoke is the “least authentic Middle-Eastern experience” and he’s got awards falling out of every pocket. If you’re lucky, he might even show you his chicken wing tattoo.

Middle Eastern food has a gorgeous rainbow of spices to draw on to shape the flavours of food and drink – from the cardamom that gives Turkish coffee it’s unique flavour through to the cumin often rubbed into lamb. Spices indigenous to India, such as the aforementioned cardamom, were cultivated in the gardens of Babylon as far back as 10,000 years ago. The people of the Middle East went to great lengths to keep the origin of their spices from the Europeans, such as the Ancient Greeks, and wove outlandish stories to inflate the prices. It wasn’t until the 1st Century B.C. that they were finally caught out!

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WEEKEND BRUNCH FOR 2 AT ARTICHOKE

New Magicbox Experiences

We are excited to include the family-focused Hungry Mummies cooking as part of our curated experiences. They specialise in food that is kid-friendly and easy on the budget. You can also take your kids so that they learn how to cook Asian dishes for themselves.

We hope you come away inspired and energised. You can get a Magicbox on our website and try out any of the experiences listed above (and almost 70 others), or gift a magical and memorable experience to friends or family this Christmas.

GIFT A MAGICBOX