Corrugated of Course

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!

Consumers in Europe have a high regard for paper-based packaging. In fact, they love it!

Here are some facts from a study in Germany:

• 79% of the German consumers think that paper based packaging is ecologically advantageous compared to plastics.

The “5 easies” are a set of conditions on the functional requirements secondary packaging must adhere to in order to be called “Retail Ready Packaging” (also known as Shelf Ready Packaging).

It may not seem like it, but Retail Ready Packaging was a dramatic shift in our industry’s philosophy and required a whole new approach to packaging.

Flip books were essentially the first form of animation. They were made by slightly altering a series of images to create a “scene”. All the images would be attached in a book and, when turned rapidly, the animation would come to life. Although a very clever invention for its time, it was of course superceded by cinematic film.

Christmas is upon us once again and following up on the discovery that kids prefer playing with boxes over toys, we looked for further evidence of this fact in action.

Last month, Facebook’s “Open Compute” project unveiled a daring design challenge for students at Purdue University’s College of Technology: to create a biodegradable server chassis.  (That’s computer casing to you and me.)

With Christmas fast approaching, Santa’s “little helpers” will be thinking hard about what kids want for their presents, if they’ve been good, of course.  However, Santa may want to read the research conducted by Ribena, a UK juice drink brand, on what kids enjoy playing with… he might be surprised.

This year, Poland’s prestigious packaging contest, PakStar, ran for its 6^th edition in Poznan and revealed an interesting winner in its “Primary Packaging” category.

Over the summer we wrote about the Israeli inventor who created the first cardboard bicycle; a project many experts had considered impossible.

Well, Izhar Gafni and Nimrod Elmish of  I.G. Cardboard are expanding on their first venture and  developing  cardboard wheelchairs!

How do you merge delicious sweets and the great game of football?  Simple, packaging that comes in the shape of the ball.  That’s what one confectionery manufacturer did to celebrate the UEFA Euro 2012 (The European Football Championship) which took place in Poland and the Ukraine last summer.