SpaceMaker® School Boxes

It’s Good Being King

The king of school boxes. SpaceMaker® brought excitement to storing school supplies and to the industry.

It is a product that kids know by sight and by name. The distinctive shiny bumps on the lid, surrounded by a textured field, the different colored lid and bases.

What looked like a simple plastic box was actually intense engineering and manufacturing quality requirements… ensuring that the right polypropylene resin was used, that the lid and base matched up evenly and smoothly, the tongue and groove latch, and even the amount of pressure needed to close and latch… creating the SpaceMaker® “SNAP.” So distinct, the bumps and contrasting polished and textured areas, SpaceMaker® became the most copied and mimicked school box ever.

The standard 5″ x 8″ size was by far the workhorse of the family. The SpaceMaker® Stretch was of course a “stretched” version that could hold a 12″ ruler. While the Box and the Stretch dominated the middle and older end of the spectrum, the SpaceMaker® Case covered the younger end. The handled box was easier for the youngest kids to carry. As the need for larger supply boxes started to emerge, the Big Box came to life, which was merely the case version, minus the handle… expanded the product family, added breadth of line, introduced an entirely new box to the market, and all done with $0 tooling investment.

However when it was time to truly revolutionize the line, the Pencil Pocket™ went after the zipper pouch market by offering a binder version, with a hole configuration that would fit into any domestic or international ring binder, as well as a backpack version without the holes. In order to further grow the demographic target, this new “box” was introduced to keep kids carrying their SpaceMakers® into middle, junior high, high school, and hopefully into college.