Game boxes are called, in manufacturing terms, rigid boxes. This means that they are produced directly in three-dimensional form. As opposed to folding cartons, which are produced in the form of cardboard sheets that can be manually folded. Printing is often directly applied to folding cartons. Not so much, obviously, to rigid boxes.
Rigid boxes use box wrap. All artwork and text content is prepared separately and printed on sheets of glossy, matte or textured paper. These sheets are then cut and automatically glued on every side of the box itself (bottom wrap) and of its lid (top wrap) during the manufacturing process. This is how German game manufacturer Ludo Fact does it:
Until the mid-1900s, game boxes were wrapped solely in generic, patterned paper. A lithographed sheet containing the main artwork was then pasted on top of the box wrap, on the box cover and sometimes also on the aprons.
References and Further Browsing
- Box Wrap, on The Big Game Hunter
- Box Wrap, on Fairway 3 Games
- Rigid Boxes, on Paperbox
- Lithography, on Wikipédia
Ngram of Box wrap.
What’s an Ngram?
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