About

Unboxing refers to the practice of photographing or recording oneself while opening a new product out of its original packaging to showcase the contents as well as the recipient's first impression of the product. On YouTube, unboxing videos are typically associated with consumer reviews of hi-tech gadgets like computers, video games or mobile phones, however, similar videos have been uploaded by beauty and fashion bloggers to show off their latest purchases from "hauls" or shopping sprees.

Origin

The practice of documenting the opening of a packaged product was initially referred to as “unpacking” as early as November 2004 in an Engadget^[1] article about opening a Nintendo DS box, as well as in Joystiq^[2] and TV Envy^[3] articles published in the fall of 2005. The earliest known usage of the term "unboxing" can be attributed to an article titled “Unpacking the Xbox 360; hot unboxing action" posted via Joystiq^[4] on November 16th, 2005.

Spread

In February 2006, Flickr user Josh Bancroft^[5] uploaded a series of unboxing photos to showcase his new MacBook Pro. The following month, the domain Unboxing.com^[7] was registered by the high-tech lifestyle blog Gear Live to feature its unboxing videos and photos of gadgets and devices. In June, a Flickr group^[6] was created for people to share their unboxing photos and the first YouTube video depicting the unboxing of Nokia E61^[8] smartphone was uploaded by YouTuber UnBoxedIt.

The first definition for "unboxing" was added to Urban Dictionary^[13] on February 1st, 2008. Unboxing photo collections and videos have appeared on CNET^[14], Slashgear^[15], Mashable^[16] and Wired.^[17] The trend of unboxing videos on YouTube has been also covered by news sites including the Independent^[22], Gizmodo^[23] and even made the front page of the Wall Street Journal^[20][21] print edition in December 2006. Additional blog posts are shared on Tumblr^[9] and Twitter^[10] using the hashtag #unboxing. As of September 2012, search for “unboxing”^[11] on YouTube yields approximately 547,000 videos.

Notable Examples

Since YouTube's launch in 2005, there have been many notable unboxing events centered around major product releases. On November 11th, 2006, YouTuber CheapyD uploaded a video in which he unboxes a PlayStation 3 video game console (shown below, left). In the following seven years, the video garnered more than 900,000 views and 1,100 comments. On February 4th, 2008, YouTube I1hate1the1Air published an unboxing video for the Macbook Air by Apple, in which he criticizes Apple's design of the product (shown below, right). In the first six years, the video gained over 1.28 million views and 35,600 comments.

On July 13th, 2009, Infinity Ward released an unboxing video for their Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 "Prestige Edition" (shown below, left), which accumulated upwards of 4.32 million views and 33,900 comments in the next four years. On June 19th, 2010, the Chilla Frilla YouTube channel published an unboxing video for the Xbox 360 Slim. In the first three years, the video received more than 2.4 million views and 23,000 comments.

There have been many unboxing videos for each iteration of the iPhone. On September 18th, 2012, the T3 YouTube channel uploaded an unboxing video for the iPhone 5 (shown below, left), which gained over 2.13 million views and 4,000 comments in the following year. On December 28th, an unboxing video for the developer Ouya console was published on YouTube (shown below, right), accumulating upwards of one million views and 4,700 comments in the next seven months

While many of these types of videos focus on the latest gadgets on the market, unboxig is used to show off items purchased in shopping sprees for items including candles, beauty products and sneakers.

Other Notable Videos

Web Series

In April 2010, internet television channel Revision3 launched a web series titled “Unboxing Porn”^[12] (shown below left), combining the product showcase format with the tropes of cheesy pornographic films. The series ran for 35 episodes through September 2011. In December 2010, Revision3 launched “Unbox Therapy”^[24] (shown below, right), another series dedicated to serious unboxing of gaming, photography, and hi-tech audio equipment. As of September 2012, the show is still active and its YouTube channel^[25] has roughly 128,000 subscribers and more than 19 million views.

YouTube Lawsuit

In January 2019, a lawsuit was filed in Brazil against Google for hosting content on YouTube that allegedly engaged "in abusive advertising practices toward children."^[26] On March 22nd, 2019, Vox^[27] published an article about the lawsuit, noting that unboxing videos were the primary target of the lawsuit. Additionally, the article contained a statement from YouTube regarding the content:

"Our policies make it clear that YouTube content creators are responsible for ensuring their content complies with local laws, regulations and YouTube Community Guidelines, including paid product placements. If content is found to violate these policies, we take action, which can include removing content. In addition, YouTube does not allow users under 13 to create or own accounts on YouTube, and when we identify an account of someone who is underage we terminate that account."

On March 24th, The Daily Dot published an article about the lawsuit titled "Lawsuit alleges YouTube’s unboxing videos are ‘abusive’ ads aimed at kids."

Parodies

In March 2012, Funny or Die^[18] released a parody skit of unboxing videos in which Apple's CEO Tim Cook describes his first experience of opening up an iPad.

Search Interest

Search interest began to appear in 2004 due to "unboxing" being a term for a type of coding apparent in Java and C#.

External References