(Video link here.) This morning, we found several emails from readers alerting us to this video that is flying around the internet like wildfire. It’s about 9-year-old Caine who devised an elaborate arcade out of cardboard, great quantities of packing tape, plastic toys – whatever he could find – over the course of a summer vacation hanging around his dad’s used auto parts store. You can read the backstory here.

Though for us a bit too long and treacly toward the end, it is really worth checking out the first 6 or so minutes to witness the work of a truly inventive mind, and BIG spirit, who made a great deal out of what was at hand.  “No” does not appear to be in his kid’s  vocabulary.

One of the best lines is from Caine’s dad, when his son said he wanted to buy a claw machine: “Why don’t you just build it?”… a perfect question. So Caine did.

We can only imagine what a kid like Caine might grow up to be, and do.

Related posts: chris hackett’s brooklyn ‘obtainium’ mine
are you a ‘garage’ inventor?
five futuristic inventions at work now, full of crazy hope
“can do” (maira kalman)
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2 replies on “caine’s arcade: a miracle of cardboard, tape, imagination

  1. that little boy put his summer to wonderful use. it’s great that someone found it, and celebrated him.

  2. God Bless him, reminded me of my son, I was a single mom and did not have
    my son used to make things with empty boxes,
    then whenever my grand-kids came, and that was not often, I would get empty boxes for them to do things and play, I still have one of the boxes up in my closet….they made a doll house, with windows and doors….etc.
    I made once for a group of after school kids a whole Christmas Village out of
    milk and O.J. empty boxes…..
    but now the kids even my grand-kids have those electronic things in their hands and they don’t use their ‘brains’ or ‘imagination’ ….they have become robots….
    God bless this little boy and the gentleman that thought of getting everyone to come and help Caine….

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