Buy a kid an expensive toy and what do they do? They play with it for a while but eventually it gets shoved aside in favor of the box. A ship, a plane, a castle… it doesn’t matter, in their inquisitive minds that box could become absolutely anything!

Although pairing corrugated packaging with children’s creativity is not a new notion, it has never really been commercialised. Many kids can just go on scavenger hunts around the house for spare corrugated, find some tape, and bring their designs to life, not just by shaping the boxes but by painting them too. The issue is the amount of corrugated available in the house…

This is where the story of Jeff Freeland Nelson comes in. Taking inspiration from his childhood experiences of making things with cardboard, he has created a new corrugated construction kit specifically designed for young children – “Play from Scratch”.

Taking research by Ribena (where 1 in 7 parents reported their kids played longer with the packaging than the actual toy) and an informal Ohio experiment (where a brave teacher replaced all toys with corrugated packaging) into consideration, it would appear the “market research” is in favor of Jeff’s idea.

Now it’s time for really young “designers” to show us what they’ve got!