The Strange Reason Domino's Just Unveiled New Retro Pizza Boxes

Hollywood productions, both great and small, have had a long and lucrative partnership with consumer goods, which could explain why we see so many TV shows and movies interacting with things we can buy or use ourselves (cue Tom Hanks and Federal Express in "Cast Away," or Subway in "Hawaii Five-O," per Fast Company). And who can forget the iconic partnership between "E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial" and Reese's Pieces, which took the candy's popularity to new heights? In other cases, shows have been known to make the leap from the screen into real life, for partnerships that can extend from consumer goods into the fast food space. 

"Stranger Things" is one show that appears to know how to navigate between the Netflix TV world and the real world, as it launches collaborations with brands like Nike, H&M, Lego, and Levis, per Teen Vogue. Now, it appears to have taken that spirit of collaboration to a partnership with Domino's, which was revealed in a Reddit post, showing a very retro-looking Domino's pizza box ... and in case you didn't know what was up, it had "Limited Edition '80s Retro Box" written on the side.

One might assume that took something special for Domino's to agree to resurrect its old pizza box design. After all, it feels like only recently, people became aware of a strange thing about Domino's monochromatic boxes. A TikTok user was kind enough to show us that the boxes could actually form real-life dominoes, grabbing the attention of sites like Delish and The Mirror. And as one TikTok user pointed out, "If you join them [the boxes] together, you get a total of four circles, and Domino's starts with a D, which is the fourth letter in the alphabet."

And while these "Stranger Things"-themed Domino's boxes don't seem likely to be used as dominos, they have their own special quirk, because as this Reddit user pointed out, "Something is coming" on the 16th. The box says you can "order with your mind." The new "old" box doesn't just revive Domino's box of old; it also points out what new box designer Lee Rolston, Global Strategy Director at Jones Knowles Ritchie said was a problem back in 2016, per Wired. "Domino's ... boxes had become cluttered with generic messaging," Rolston explained. For this collaboration's purposes, the "generic messaging" has been replaced with easter eggs and references to "Stranger Things," potentially turning its retro packaging into a TV-show-themed easter egg hunt and trivia game all-in-one.