Tube Box Art

Arcturus

Art

RCA

RCA

RCA

CBS

Crosley

Crosley

Cunningham

Hytron

Ken-Rad

National Union

Philco

Philco

Raytheon

Raytheon

RCA

Silvertone

Sylvania

Tung-Sol

Pure unadulterated fun! Boxed vintage tubes offer a wide range of bold colors and designs. Here are some of the more interesting designs that I've run across while accumulating spare parts.

My favorite boxes feature "wraparound" designs, using more than one side of the box to achieve more interesting effects. You have to hand it to the Arcturus box designer—who would have the ambition to portray an entire nightscape on such a humble object as a five-inch cardboard box! But it's a very successful design, one of the best-known of all tube boxes.

Even more impressive is the RCA "Around the World" design, which wraps a map of the world around all four faces of a jumbo box. Apologies to those with small monitors or slow connections, but I thought the colors and detail on this box justified publishing near-life size images.

The group of "Nipper" boxes shows several sizes of box featuring RCA's famous mascot. The "back" side of the smallest Nipper box included some ad copy for RCA Victor records and equipment.