How Did an Empty Toothpaste Box Become a Bus?

In some urban homes and school craft activities from the 1970s to the early 1980s, an empty toothpaste carton or another long cardboard box was not immediately discarded. Children could treat the box as a bus body and draw windows and doors with a pencil. A simple version had wheels drawn on its sides. If four similar bottle caps, two pieces of thin wire or bamboo skewers were available, holes could be made underneath and the box could become a vehicle that actually rolled.

There was no standard plan. If the cardboard tore around an axle hole, a small patch of stiff paper might reinforce it. If the wheels were uneven and the bus kept turning, the axle had to be adjusted. Some children drew passengers in the windows; others cut a door that could open. Adults often had to help with scissors or wire. Materials and methods differed by place, period and household, so this should not be treated as a childhood experience shared by everyone.

Once several buses were finished, the game properly began. Children could mark stops on a table or concrete yard, take turns as drivers and passengers, or release their vehicles from the same line to see which rolled straightest and furthest. An ordinary piece of adult packaging thus gained a second identity. It was not merely a crude copy of a shop-bought vehicle: making, testing, repairing and inventing a route together were the fullest parts of the toy.