Box Vox

packaging as content

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January 20, 2010

Controller-Shaped Underwear Packaging

X-BoxUnderwear Upper photo: from AsusEpoxy’s PhotoBucket; Lower photo from Aksys Nation! blog

Search online for “underwear” + “control” and what do you find? There’s women’s “control underwear” (AKA: “shapewear”—descendants of girdles). There’s men’s scent control underwear (for hunters).

And now: underwear for gamers—this one packaged in an X-box controller-shaped tin. (Other shapes too.) Game tie-in product licensing, run amok? Or is there something more behind this underwear-as-gamegear trend?

Consider JennyLC Chowdhury’s Intimate Controllers:

“Intimate Controllers” is a platform where video games are played by couples touching each other.  The platform consists of two controllers, a bra for the female player and boxer shorts for the male player.  Each controller is embedded with 6 sensors placed with varying degrees of intimacy in relation to the body part with which they correspond. Players must pass game levels together and in doing so, game play results in increasingly intimate positioning. The goal of this project was to research and create objects that challenge the traditional notions and orientation of video game play.

from JennyLC Chowdhury’s Graduate Thesis for
NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program

(An Intimate Controllers diagram, after the fold…)


1996380454_9ba231ffe6_o From JennyLC Chowdhury’s web site

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

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