It never ceases to amaze me how many clever and creative uses people find for cardboard. Designers have used it to make everything from furniture to bicycle frames. Hell, Google even used it to make a low-cost virtual reality headset.
The latest crazy cardboard creation comes from Hong Kong-based ad firm Ogilvy & Mather HK. In a recently-launched campaign for Pizza Hut, the firm has designed a contraption dubbed the “Blockbuster Box” — a cardboard pizza box that transforms into a projector once you’re done eating the pie inside.
It’s definitely not going to blow your 1080p Epson out of the water, but what the projector lacks in resolution, it makes up for with simplicity. All you have to do is open the box, pluck out the lens (which sits atop the little protective stand), mount it inside a pre-cut hole in the front of the box, and then prop your smartphone up on the stand.
After that, anything that plays on your phone’s screen will magically get blown up and beamed onto your wall. The side of the box also features a QR code you can scan in order to unlock exclusive (and undoubtedly Pizza Hut-branded) videos to watch while you stuff pizza down your face.
There’s no word on whether the Blockbuster Box is headed to Pizza Hut locations outside Hong Kong, and odds are fairly high that this is just a one-off marketing stunt and nothing more. We really hope we’re wrong though — a cardboard projector would be the perfect complement to our cardboard furniture setup.
If Pizza Hut doesn’t run with the idea, somebody else definitely should. A low-cost, cardboard-based projector that uses your phone as its brain would surely be a big hit on Kickstarter or Indiegogo.
