Thinking outside the ...

Today's post is about cardboard boxes. And it has been begging to come into existence for weeks.

As some of you know, I'm presently signed up for a Dale Carnegie course. If you've ever done this course, you have probably recited the piece, "I found myself, yesterday, outside a huge box factory ..." There are actions that go with this speech which will haunt me for the rest of my days.

If that wasn't enough impetus for an entry on boxes, then the three guys in the class who work at Visy push it over the line; a stronger case for an entry on cardboard boxes could not have been made.

Ever since The Simpsons episode 1F11 ('Bart Gets Famous'), children the world over have been fascinated with cardboard cartons.

In case your memory needs a jog (or a complete rewrite), this episode opens with Principal Skinner and Mrs Krabappel taking the children for a field trip to the local box factory.

Any shred of glee that the tour might produce for the children is crushed when they learn that: (a) there is not, nor ever will be, any candy in the boxes in the factory; (b) no one at the factory has ever had their hands cut off by the machinery; (c) the boxes are assembled in Flint, Michigan, and only manufactured in Springfield.

The tour does not end well.

Nevertheless, the exposure that the programme gave to the humble cardboard box obviously had a positive impact: as I look around the room I'm in now, I count no less than 11 cardboard boxes. Seeing as episode 1F11 was first screened in early 1994, and none of these boxes appears to be older than 5 years, I think we can hereby conclude that even bad publicity is still publicity.

I could go into the history of the cardboard box - its commercial production in England beginning in 1817, the adaptation of corrugated cardboard into the walls of the box in the USA in 1895, its evolution into packaging for breakfast cereals propelled by the vision of the Kellogg brothers, the later threat of plastics and other synthetic packaging media - but that would require a whole paragraph.

So instead I leave you with this sobering thought: what packages your Cheerios today could be packaging you tomorrow.