Cardboard

Paperboard is a paper-based material, usually less than about ten mils (0.010 inches (0.25 mm)) in thickness. It is often used for folding cartons, set-up boxes, carded packaging, etc. Cardboard boxes are industrially prefabricated boxes, which are primarily used for packaging goods and materials. "Cardboard box" is a misnomer, as what most people know as cardboard boxes are actually made of corrugated fiberboard, not cardboard. Cardboard boxes can be recycled to produce paper, or given a post-primary life as a cheap material for the construction of a range of projects, among them being science experiments, children's toys, costumes and insulative lining.

The first commercial cardboard box was produced in England in 1817. The first cardboard box manufactured in the United States was made in 1895. By 1900, wooden crates and boxes were being replaced by corrugated paper shipping cartons. The advent of flaked cereals increased the use of cardboard boxes. The first to use cardboard boxes as cereal cartons was the Kellogg brothers. The Musée du Cartonnage et de l'Imprimerie (Museum of the Cardboard Box) in Valréas, France traces the history of cardboard box making in the region. Cardboard boxes have been used there since 1840 for transporting the Bombyx mori moth and its eggs from Japan to Europe by silk manufacturers, and for more than a century the manufacture of cardboard boxes was a major industry in the area.

A common cliché is that, if presented with a large and expensive new toy, a child will quickly become bored with the toy and play with the box instead. Although this is usually said somewhat jokingly, children certainly enjoy playing with boxes, using their imagination to portray the box as an infinite variety of objects. One example of this from popular culture is Calvin of the Calvin and Hobbes comic strip, who often used a cardboard box for imaginative purposes from a "transmogrifier" to a time machine.

So prevalent is the cardboard box's reputation as a plaything that in 2005 a cardboard box was added to the National Toy Hall of Fame, one of very few non-brand-specific toys to be honoured with inclusion. As a result, a toy "house" (actually a log cabin) made from a large cardboard box was added to the Hall, housed at the Strong - National Museum of Play in Rochester, New York.