There are many different industries that rely on custom cardboard boxes, but as the festive season approaches, one of the first that will come to mind for many people is the board game.

A popular gift idea for people of all ages, board games have been played for over 8000 years and have been sold in cardboard boxes for over two centuries.

Whilst the types of games, the designs and the playing pieces have changed over the years, the box they are stored in has largely remained the same throughout this entire time and does not appear to be going anywhere any time soon.

Why were board games stored in cardboard boxes in the first place? What did manufacturers do before cardboard was an option? And why have they continued to endure to this very day, thanks to skilled manufacturers producing them at scale?

How Was The First Commercially Sold Board Game Packaged?

It is believed that the first board game to be sold in a cardboard box was The Game of Besieging from 1817, around the time that cardboard boxes were allegedly first manufactured.

However, commercial board games themselves predate this by several centuries, with the first game to be commercially sold believed to be Game of the Goose, a race game that was originally believed to have been made in 1587 for King Phillip of Spain before being produced and sold in countless different ways.

Like a lot of games before it, Game of the Goose was initially a folk game with varying rules and board shapes, some of which are particularly elaborate and artistic, before being commodified and mass-produced.

It was sold in countless ways, on paper, a wooden board and even stone, although in all of these cases, it is unclear how it was packaged or if it was packaged at all.

It is possible that some versions of the game were either sold as is or wrapped in paper in a similar fashion to playing cards from that era.

It became a very popular game, to the point that it caused a minor moral panic for supposedly promoting gambling due to its use of dice, and it inspired countless similar games.

The first and most noteworthy of these was John Jefferys’ Journey Through Europe from 1759, the first ever commercially sold board game to have a credited individual designer, with the only older known game being Sir John Suckling’s alleged creation of cribbage.

Published by Carrington Bowles, a map publisher, the game had a cloth backing and was therefore easy to fold up and store outside of the counters and the teetotum spinner needed for play.

Why Were Cardboard Boxes Used To Store Board Games?

Following the Game of Besieging, and particularly by the end of the 19th century, when corrugated cardboard became more widely available, cardboard boxes became the standard way to store the vast majority of board games and playing cards.

The reason for this is that as games became more complex and required more components, a larger storage system was needed to hold everything, and the amount of tin or wood that would be required to store a board game would make it prohibitively expensive.

Cardboard boxes were much cheaper and, whilst not as strong as modern examples, would be strong enough to keep a game and its components safe, whilst featuring enough space to feature distinctive cover art that could help to sell the game.

Throughout the 20th century, cardboard boxes remained the main way to store cardboard boxes, and whilst the dimensions changed for logistic reasons, they continue to be used to this very day.

Why Do Board Games Continue To Be Sold In Cardboard Boxes?

In the modern age, with the wider availability of plastic and metal tins than would have been accessible to Victorian manufacturers, cardboard boxes continue to be the norm for the overwhelming majority of games.

Why is this the case? Part of the reason is tradition; board games tend to be bought by families who often will pass them on through generations, and cardboard still tends to be preferred by customers.

As well as this, outside of a few limited use cases that may require additional protection, such as travel games, cardboard is strong enough for storage, affordable, and easy to decorate and customise with embossing, high-quality prints and metallic finishes.

Finally, as people become more environmentally conscious, board games are amongst the most sustainable games available, with the vast majority of components other than dice being made from either cardboard or wood.