Michelle Hang ’19 & Songhee Lee ’21
According to Antonio Nieves, FUNBOX is an “insanely interactive and instagramable toyland. It is an art experience on social media and physically.”
The owners of FUNBOX, Nieves and Laurence Hallier, created 20 rooms of trendy themes as a walk-through pop-up museum so that people can experience something new in Thousand Oaks.
This museum is similar to other museums that are popular in urban areas like Los Angeles, but with a twist. The inspiration behind it lies with Nieves’ nine siblings. Nieves started brainstorming ideas, stemming from his interests and what his siblings like. He collaborated with engineers and artists around the world to bring his childhood memories to life.
People start the maze by walking straight through the teddy bear tunnel and wall. There are over 2,500 teddy bears through this tunnel.
Next, there is a crayon room with a swing, seesaw and life size crayons with the name FUNBOX. After the crayon room, there is a flower room where one can walk through or take pictures in red, pink and white flowers strung from the ceiling.
There is a trendy color changing light bulb wall on the side of the flower path, and on the left, there is a room with a life-sized Monopoly board on the floor with local California locations such as Disneyland and Universal Studios. In the middle of the board game, there is a box for people to go inside, filled with colorful balloons. Surrounding the board game are walls with sticky notes, which depict Super Mario Bros, Minecraft and super hero themed. There are about 521 sticky notes for every wall art according to Nieves.
When people walk out of that room, there is a walkway of about seven rooms with different themes. There is a piggy bank room with 15,000 piggy banks, a room with the poop emoji, an upside down Simpsons living room, a butterflies and classic wings room, a room with 1,150 pool noodles attached to the walls, a rainbow throne room and a monkey emoji room with about 2,000 bananas surrounding the emojis.
After walking through the pool noodles, there is a room with mirrors and lights that provides a unique background for pictures; it is also known as the Infinity room. Additionally, there is a disco room as well as a room with 24,000 letters hanging from the ceiling, which required about 10,000 hours to completely build.
Lastly, there is an Instagram wall with large sequence depict the Instagram logo, the lifesize Fruit Loop cereal bowl that people can “swim in” and a “thank you” wall. The Fruit Loops bowl holds about 6,000 fruit loops.
FUNBOX is filled with different themed rooms that can provide a fun and unique experience for all ages. Tickets can be found at funbox.com at $17 for adults (13 years and older) and $9 for kids (five to 12 years old). Ages four and under are free. FUNBOX is open Mon.-Thurs. from 11 a.m.-7:30 p.m., 11 a.m.-9 p.m. on Fri. and 10 a.m.-9 p.m. on Sun.
PHOTOS BY: Michelle Hang
