Unboxing is the unpacking of new products, especially hi-tech consumer products. The whole process is captured on video and later uploaded to the Internet. The term has been labeled a new form of "geek porn."

The oldest video on YouTube

YouTube

YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....

 using the name "unboxing" is the opening of a boxed Nokia E61

Nokia E61

The Nokia E61 is a smartphone from the Eseries range, a Series 60 Third Edition device with a QWERTY keyboard targeting business users in the European market. As of Q4 2006 Cingular and Rogers Wireless have deployed a similar yet restricted version designated the Nokia E62 in the North American...

 smartphone

Smartphone

A smartphone is a high-end mobile phone built on a mobile computing platform, with more advanced computing ability and connectivity than a contemporary feature phone. The first smartphones were devices that mainly combined the functions of a personal digital assistant and a mobile phone or camera...

, uploaded on June 12, 2006. There are, however, older videos on the site that show the same activity but using other names such as "opening" or "unpacking".

According to Google Trends

Google Trends

Google Trends is a public web facility of Google Inc., based on Google Search, that shows how often a particular search-term is entered relative to the total search-volume across various regions of the world, and in various languages...

, searches for the term "unboxing" began to surface in the final quarter of 2006.

See also

• Product teardown
  Product teardown
  A product teardown, or simply teardown, is the act of disassembling a product, such as a television set, to identify its component parts and functions. For products having secret technology, such as the Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-25, the process may be secret...
  
  

http://www.unbox-it.com is a source dedicated to unboxing videos.