packaging as content

September 29, 2010

Wooden Toy Packaging

Toy blocks of wood, painted to look like packaging.

Usually, when one thinks of wooden toys, one thinks of wooden train sets or wooden cars—the idealized “authentic” toys of an innocent childhood—devoid of plastic or commercial branding. The gravatational force of commerce is strong, however, and not even “authentic” wooden toys can resist its pull. (Not that play shopping toys are such a new thing.)

All of the toy packages here are no-name, look-alike brands… except for the Bandaids, and Bandaids—as any child knows—is a brandnomer, anyway.

I like the economy of the set above: bottle, jar, juice carton, milk jug, toothpaste tube—all painted on rectangular planks of wood. With some of the other sets below, there appears to have been a bit more woodwork.