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Made By Humans #8 - Microdots

This is Shibin making the “microdots” for our espionage themed mystery “Spies, Lies and Serious Bad Guys”. Essentially what you are seeing is a tiny message written in the smallest font possible, folded up and glued underneath a postage stamp for kids to find.


Whenever we design a new mystery we follow a few of our own made-up rules. One - don’t scare kids, so no murder or monsters. Two - don’t direct kids onto screens. Three - crack ourselves up. And when we came up with the idea for the microdots for our spy mystery we really split a gut.

It has always been our goal here at Mail Order Mystery to create experiences engaging enough to get kids off screens, at least for a while. All of our mysteries are screen free experiences with one small exception. In the Spy mystery kids can either call a phone number for a clue or they can get the same clue by entering a code into a super basic website. And that’s it. No QR codes, no online content, no searching the internet for answers or hints. It’s just old-school analog good times: a madcap spy mission that comes with cipher wheels, spy handbooks, fake mustaches, wanted posters, scrabble tiles that spell out a hint and - wait for it - a microdot hidden under a postage stamp! Ha ha ha!

Spies, Lies and Serious Bad Guys is a super summer adventure. Send your kid to spy school, find a missing agent and stop an evil villain from ending all fun forever. Who would have the last laugh then?  Mwa ha ha.