Mark from Mk1 Yoyos posted a great article on the YoYoExpert Forums on how he came up with the epic “hobbit hole” box for the Ring-Bearer.


I love working on yoyo packaging, and the Ring-Bearer carton went through a much longer process than most I’ve worked on.

My earliest concept was to use a gold on black box using the hexagon shape that most of my yoyos release in.

There’s also a print of the Hobbit with some cool green/blue/black/white art on it that I like a lot:

I shared this with Mag, they doodled up a cool concept:

Later, they had this brainstorm:

(Sketch by Mag)

I couldn’t fathom how to engineer that so we tried some more shape ideas.

(Sketch by Mag)

I mocked it up in paper.

Some test cuts.

Later I realized that this couldn’t fold flat after the one glue tab is set.

New idea, with mathematically allowable folding:

First test cut with packing tape window!

We decided that flipping it over the other way looked better.

Here’s how it looks in FreeCAD.

Improving the insert:

Here is Mag’s super important and lovely concept:

An early draft sliced up in Blender:

I learned how to “rig” a cardboard box via youtube tutorials.

I also bought some acetate sheet to cut test inserts out of:

A really cool infographic about the plants from NZ near where they filmed the LotR trilogy:

(By Mag)

These plants appear on the final box artwork!

The details that changed got smaller and smaller as time went on, until this finally went to print. I only made one major mistake! I hope you can find it on the box, haha!

One final photo, a stack of flat cartons: