that's calvin!.....don't lie!.....my spider-sense tells me!......

Calvin certainly knew how to put a cardboard box to good use! I think by the time I drew this I was already a big fan of Calvin & Hobbes, though I'd have to check my collectoin of Waterman books to be sure they weren't too late. Still, I can attest to my own childhood to know what kids can do with a box. I used to cut a viewscreen in the front, and draw the control knobs and switches inside so I could run around pretending I was driving a space ship! Then all at once I realized I must look like a complete idiot and stopped. I was about 6 I guess. Probably the only reason I did it at all was not that it was so much fun as because the idea of making a sort of space ship seemed neat. In practice it didn't turn out to be much fun at all.

I also remember when I was very much younger than that, probably three or at most four. I was given a big peddle car in the shape of a fire-engine. When my dad lifted it out of the box, I promptly got into the box to play! Kids are idiots, even me.

I absolutely refused to give up that mentality, even today, which probably explains my love of Role Playing Games.
I still get to fly across the universe, meet aliens and shoot bad guys every other Sunday with my Star Wars gaming group.

"Then all at once I realized I must look like a complete idiot and stopped."
For those people who either didn't realize or who did and don't care, there's always LARP.

Ah...I never had this time in my life. I always had a vivid imagination but be damned, I never had that flight of fantasy stage where your imagination was so powerful that it could literally overcome your reality perception. I almost envy people who had those experiences. I have only felt something similar in Lucid Dreams...

I don't.

If kids ever lose their sense of wonder, all is lost.

I remember doing stuff like this... I think I stopped around the time I could no longer fit inside the boxes. ^_^;;

They make those huge ones for refrigerators--you never grew out of those, I thinks. I've once succeeded in painting such a box up to look exactly like a phonebooth...give or take a few small alterations, since it is, after all, a cardboard vehicle.

My nephew still loves playing with "stuff" more than video games. He plays them, but will drop a controller in a hearbeat to horse around with ordinary junk with his uncle :)

As soon as he learns the value of money, rest assure he'll never play with anything cheap again!

The beauty of simple toys is they can be ANYTHING. A box can be a castle, car, cradle, or creature (I like alliteration . . sue me) A GI Joe is pretty much, well, a GI Joe. Having the creativity to see how else something might be used is the key to most invention, great and small.

In other words, I'll second marmelmm
If kids ever lose their sense of wonder, all is lost.

of course your evocative illustrations also just bring out the nostalgia in me

I want a 'fridge box painted up like a British call box. My own Tardis!

Go for it! Nobody's looking. Or course, being a box as big as that is almost cheating, since it's the same size (on the outside at least) as a "real" Tardis. (Assuming there were real Tardises.)