Numlock News: January 12, 2026 • Magic, Sneakers, Ice

Jan 12, 2026

By Walt Hickey

No Real Cultural Footprint

Avatar: Fire and Ash continues to be the top film globally, racking up another $86 million in its fourth week of release, $65.6 million of which was from the international box office. This brings the film’s box office to $1.23 billion so far. It remains a mystery what international audiences find so compelling in a make-believe story about a military superpower gasping for hegemony by launching myopic military campaigns in the explicit pursuit of extracting mineral resources that have been otherwise completely replaced by more efficient green solutions.

Rebecca Rubin, Variety

Boosted Boosters

“Fallen Empires” and “Homelands” are considered low points for Magic: The Gathering, with the fifth and seventh expansion packs considered to be two of the worst products ever produced by Wizards of the Coast. The two sold badly upon release in the mid-1990s, and “Homeland” was such a bust that Wizards just gave away sealed boxes if you were at a convention in summer 1996. Well, nostalgia is certainly a real thing, because sealed boxes of those sets are now selling for anywhere from $450 to $550 apiece on the secondary market, despite most of the cards in the set selling for pocket change. Their main attraction appears to be for collectors who wish to have a complete collection of Magic: The Gathering sealed boxes from 1993 to 2026. Several sets are going up for auction at Heritage in early February.

Jeffrey Dohm-Sanchez, ICV2

Books

Despite all evidence to the contrary, sales of books were up last year, hitting 762.4 million print copies sold across 2025. That’s down from the pandemic high of 839.7 million copies sold in 2021, but the post-pandemic spikes are settling in at higher than pre-pandemic levels, so people are pretty happy. Romance sales were up 3.9 percent to 44 million units, fantasy sales dropped 8.7 percent to 24.1 million units and graphic novel sales were up 9.2 percent to 25.9 million units. Over in nonfiction, the big winner was religious books, which posted a 5.4 percent increase to 67 million units.

Jim Milliot, Publishers Weekly

Cutwater

Sales of Cutwater (a spirits-based ready-to-drink alcoholic beverage owned by Anheuser-Busch) saw off-premise sales increase 78.2 percent over the course of 2025 as the alcohol brand enjoyed a banner year. On a volume basis, consumption was up 41.5 percent, and at 5.6 million cases, Cutwater became the 10th-largest spirits brand in America. What’s driving this? A mix of factors, including soft power victories such as appearances in songs and the famous power of the Anheuser-Busch InBev distributor network. Oh, and also the now-mainstream #CutwaterChallenge that kicked off on TikTok in July, the extent of which is “can you drink a four pack of Cutwater on film?” The answer to that is “yeah man, pretty easily in fact, wait, I didn’t realize these were 13 percent alcohol by volume, I need an adult.”

Dave Infante, VinePair

Sneaker

The sneaker boom that has defined the footwear industry for the past two decades is feared to be slowing down. The trend of more casual footwear becoming popular and acceptable in more locations was ultimately a massive hit. Sneakers went from accounting for about a quarter of global footwear sales to about half of global sales and about 60 percent of footwear sales in the United States. Still, there is concern that the growth has probably passed its peak, which could see reverberations not only in the apparel companies that produce sneakers but also in the platforms and secondary markets that have made sneakers into investment vehicles.

Tim Loh, Bloomberg

Coal

High-resolution satellite systems like TROPOMI, GHGSat and MethaneSAT are getting better at identifying plumes of methane that escape from anywhere in the world. While China is the largest methane emitter globally, India is increasingly a subject of concern, particularly given the size of its coal industry. Coal supplies 75 percent of India’s electricity, and the government plans to add 307 gigawatts of coal power capacity by 2035. The government also plans to increase natural gas to 15 percent of its power mix by 2030.

Tim Daiss, Nikkei Asia

Ice

Italy has had years to build an ice hockey arena in time for the forthcoming Winter Olympics in Milano-Cortina, and it was looking pretty touch-and-go there for a bit. This will be the first Olympics since 2014 where NHL players will return to the ice, and so the quality of the ice is of paramount concern. After three test events over the past weekend, the International Olympic Committee is now insisting that they’re good, the ice is fine, nothing to see here. Sure, they found a bunch of holes, but only one of them was wider than two centimeters, and come on, they filled that. On the other hand, one of the players who tested the ice, a Canadian who plays for Italy’s Wipptal Broncos, began his quote with “I mean we all grew up playing on ponds back in Canada,” and that’s not a great sign.

Elvira Pollina and Alex Fraser, Reuters and Daniella Matar, The Associated Press

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