'So we start with the engineering and putting it together, of course, and then you kind of gradually.

'Of course there's a great initiative happening now around 'STEAM' or 'STEM' education – we like to put the 'A' back in the Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics,' Matchstick says. Matchstick described working with elementary students to recreate human body systems through pinball. Matchstick and Talbot stress that the PinBox can be an educational tool. 'I've done workshops with kindergartners where we kind of punch all the parts out together and we talk as we build it, and it's like doing a magic show,' Matchstick says, describing the children's excitement as the machine's form came together. 'I think that helps kids and makers of all types kind of think of these different avenues and paths to get a successful game or any project off the ground,' Matchstick says. Matchstick also mentions that in lieu of achieving points, the PinBox 3000 is more about achieving 'sequential objectives,' like first trying to lock the ball and later trying to go for a target. 'And we've found that it's easily adapted to all kinds of crafts and small technologies and broken toys and what have you.' 'It's trying to encourage our communities to get back to tinkering on this little micro-level,' Matchstick adds. The marbles fly off of it and create these incredible motions,' Talbot says. 'We found that everyday items that you maybe would view as recycling or something that didn't have a value after they've been used, like a paper towel tube, you can snip it and put it into the game. Once the game is assembled, though, Talbot explains that users can go beyond those 39 parts by making additions to the board with objects ranging from stones to microprocessors. In addition to the imagination used during play, the user is also involved in assembling their PinBox 3000, which comes with 39 parts and takes about 45 minutes. 'This is the whole fun of it is there's no prescripted way to play it.' 'You make your own noises,' Matchstick says, after Talbot demonstrates sample pinball noises. Though the PinBox 3000 doesn't constantly make noise or light up like a typical pinball machine, there is a way to replicate some of that experience. VPR Pete Talbot, a co-creator of the PinBox 3000, demonstrates gameplay on the 'Swamp Quest' cardboard pinball machine, featuring art by GHOSTSHRIMP.

The play fields act like cartridges, so this is the Xbox of cardboard.' 'Each game comes with two interchangeable play fields that you can switch out, so it is a system of play. 'All the pinball players, when we take it to the conventions, say this plays very well and you can hit all your shots like a normal pinball machine,' Matchstick says. The PinBox 3000 measures 2 feet by 14 inches and 'it's all rubber-band powered and gravity fed,' Matchstick explains. 'And there were no 3-D programs when we created this, so we just kind of used our hand-and-eye skill that we’ve been using over the last 10 years when we work with cardboard.' 'We started from the bottom up, and used our abilities at bending cardboard and using a laser cutter to prototype this machine,' Matchstick explains. Cardboard has been around since the early 1800s, but a couple of Vermonters who have been working with cardboard for awhile now have come up with a novel use of the old packaging material: building cardboard pinball machines.īen Matchstick and Pete Talbot, the founders of Cardboard Teck Instantute and the creators of PinBox 3000, spoke to Vermont EditionWednesday about their pinball project.

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