Everybody loves snacks, but nobody loves snack boxes more than a Japanese university student who turns snack packaging into amazing paper sculptures.

Injecting life into snack boxes

Harukiru, a design student at Kobe Design University, uses his keen attention to detail to inject life into what would otherwise be ordinary boxes found in supermarkets.

He spends hours cutting up boxes from snacks like Toppo chocolate preztel sticks into tiny parts, which are then meticulously formed together with glue and cellophane tape.

Some paper sculptures take way longer than others, like this winged lion figure cut from a Ritz cracker box, which Harukiru spent three days on.

"It's going to be a long battle.", he tweeted in response to someone asking if he ate all the contents. 

Hopefully, he had some cheese to go with all that cracker.

https://twitter.com/02ESyRaez4VhR2l/status/1091701685280419840

The sculptures Harukiru creates are usually inspired by the designs on the box, as he tries to "respect the image of the original box as much as possible".

Here he created five figures dressed in colourful three-piece suits that correspond to their original Pringles can, completed with the face from the Pringles logo.

What got him started

Harukiru was inspired to start crafting his paper sculptures after many years of watching Tsukutte Asobo, an educational TV series in Japan, where the host would make toys out of paper and other common household objects.

The host has even built a toy car out of corrugated paper, skewer sticks, a plastic bottle and some tape.

In a February 2019 tweet, Harukiru said he started crafting paper sculptures to emulate the excitement he felt when watching Tsukutte Asobo as a young boy.

He has always been interested in paper work from a young age, but only started to work with snack boxes a few years ago.

He posted his first such paper craft in June 2017, which he made out of a Meiji chocolate box along with some black paper that served as the skeleton.

https://twitter.com/02ESyRaez4VhR2l/status/878935026167013376

He now tweets about his work accompanied with very straightforward captions.

"I worked in an empty box of Al Fort!"

"I worked on the empty box of the koala's march!"

"I worked on the empty box of Nestle Coffee!"

Struggles he faces

Occasionally, Harukiru does let on more about his process, such as how re-purposing the face from a milk chocolate box was one of his hardest struggles.

顔は今迄で一番苦戦しました pic.twitter.com/v0XnrXT6rC

— 空箱職人 はるきる (@02ESyRaez4VhR2l) December 15, 2018

"I was working in the empty box of the heat-sama sheet!"

"I worked in the empty box of the kiss of Mel!"

You can view more of his work on Twitter here.