I’m going to just say this bluntly: if Magic didn’t have a constant drip feed of “magic” contained within it at all levels, I would have walked a long time ago. Especially over the last few years, with a succession of changes I’m sure the reader is familiar with, it’s been harder to dig up the gems I’m craving in my main hobby of a decade-plus. Sometimes though, you just get served them on a silver platter, or a Twitch stream in this case. I have fallen in love with Crag & Squen. Not the characters, though they are fun, but more so the work, effort, and artistic integrity they signal and pack into the holistic marketing push surrounding Lowryn Eclipsed.
Welcome, The Jim Henson Company
In case you somehow missed it, like more than one Magic-invested friend of mine, and are confused as to what I mean, let me share the good news. The Jim Henson Company, yes the company behind the creation of The Muppets and plenty of other iconic puppet-based shows, movies and projects, made an extremely fun little music video to celebrate the run-up of Lorwyn Eclipsed. The marketing highlights of a set usually does include its “Official Trailer,” but since Wilds of Eldraine’s CGI commercial generated hype because of cute sentient gingerbread cookies and a glimpse of Garruk, nothing has quite hit like A Boggart Ballad.
The concept itself is pretty simple. Two Boggarts named Cragg and Squen live on opposite sides of the now-existent boundary between the ever-sunny Lorwyn and the depressing Shadowmoor. We hear a bit about their daily lives, see a few of the creatures around them, and are treated to their lust for knowledge about living on the other side of the world they inhabit. Unbeknownst to them, they do have an entirely different personality when they enter the other side. They recall nothing of and never will (save something drastic happening in the future of the story). But that’s besides the point.
This is a cute little musical piece which has several things going for it:
- It signals to previous Lowryn heads that Lorwyn and Shadowmoor exist at the same time on the same plane rather than being entirely separate as they were in the past.
- It shows players new to Lorwyn the differences between the two distinct halves of the plane, both in the physical changes and in the philosophical ones.
- It creates distinct and instantly memorable characters within the Magic space.
- It’s honestly clever. And catchy.
- It’s made by actual factual craftspeople across the board.
Someone Cared.
I think the thing that jumped out to me the most about this ad spot—and part of what made me fall in love with it—is that you can feel both care and craft exuding from it. You can with a lot of stuff that comes out of Wizards of the Coast and their affiliates for many of their products. But, there’s something a different between a well-produced Secret Lair and a full-CGI trailer full of beat-you-over-the-head references to things in an upcoming set and… this. A three and a half minute long rock-opera song full of original characters and environmental touches and little weirdos and main character puppets that look like they could be straight out of The Dark Crystal or Labyrinth. In watching the behind the scenes video, which somehow has about 1% of the views of the original at this time, you can hear in their own words how much the people involved, especially the main writer and also many of the puppeteers, care about the chance to be working on this. They can tell it’s cool. You could tell me this is part of the marketing push itself, but I simply won’t believe you. This is an incredibly awesome thing being put together by reams of incredibly talented people. Why wouldn’t you be excited about it, even if you had never heard about Magic: the Gathering before?
My favorite part of the behind the scenes was getting to see the puppets themselves brought to life. Oh, of course this large puppet actually has to be controlled by three people! Of course the little slug is actually a clever little animatronic that has a separate head-look-alike to control it with. The magic on display can make you forget, just for an instant, that these are puppets made and controlled by incredible artists, people at the top of their trade. As the world fills with grinder-bros and billionaire-yes-men breathlessly assuring us that we must abandon the laborious pursuit of interesting things, leaving it instead to the machine, there is no better way to fight back than with the likes of huge eared boggarts formed and piloted with great care.
All of this for an advertisement.
Of course, there is something like this found in most every Magic set. From the art on loads of cards (especially in this set, holy moly) to the designs themselves, every Magic set is its own little masterwork ready to be examined. A lot of dedicated work goes into every set, even the duds, and that work is always compelling to me on some level. So why do these silly Boggarts stand out so much?
Marketing Can Rule
I’m a Marketing Guy® by trade. I know social media, I’ve done plenty of paid social media advertisements, I’ve gotten to conceptualize an online commercial or three. Marketing, rightfully thought of as a weird necessary hanger-on for capitalism, still amazes me when it’s done well. Unfortunately it does, on average, suck. This is especially true in the Magic: the Gathering world where the in-house marketing pushes we often see seem to rely largely on ambassadors to do the work to the dedicated audience (which is fine, but of variable quality & with questionable amounts of compensation changing hands). A new audience? Perhaps some graphics on Instagram Ads telling you all about how cool Spider-man is. That’s never been too inspiring for me. Sure, there are the panels and the normal gameplay plugs and pack openings and whatnot and that is fine and good too. It all works. Hard work goes into it as much as most anything. But it takes special ideas and special effort to make something above.
Another thing which made this push special and inspiring? The “From the desk of artist” series posted on Instagram (and assumedly other platforms but that’s where I’ve seen them) contain the process videos of select artists working on some of the different pieces from Lowryn Eclipsed. My personal favorite is Iris Compiet working on Unwelcome Sprite, a relatively unassuming uncommon. Even for a decent blue uncommon, we see sketching drawing from references of actual bugs, watercolor work, colored pencils and more. Obviously hours upon hours of work to, I’ll say it again, make a great piece of fantasy art that in the grand scheme of Magic isn’t that important. Putting emphasis on these parts of the process make them that much more resonant, especially for a set that puts emphasis back on physical art made by some of Magic’s most iconic artists (and newcomers).
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We WILL be talking about the Lorwyn Eclipsed advertising push for some time. Why? Because of the likes of A Boggart Ballad, the excellent Art & Worldbuilding panel, and obviously the podcasting arc. Wait, the podcasting arc?
They Made Them Podcasters
There is only one way to port Cragg & Squen into our current reality and it is in a form that I am oh-so familiar with. Welcome to the Cragg & Squen Show, a recurring social media advertising bit that features our two beloved boggarts. They open packs, look at borderless art, joke about podcast voices, you know. All the things us Content Creators do day in and day out. But instead the Jim Henson Company is in on the joke. I love it. Thank you puppeteers for giving me my new favorite advertising campaign of all time.
Callahan Jones (he/him) is not a content creator. He’s a Gamecube collector, DanDan fanatic and occasionally, very occasionally, has a thought to share about Magic: The Gathering. Follow his pursuits on Bluesky or on his personal Substack.