• by Sarah Mahoney , Yesterday

People wrap plenty of boxes every holiday season, and two different brands — Lowe’s and Whisker — are seeing out-of-the-you-know-what possibilities.

Lowe’s wants to help people foil gift snoopers with its Holiday Under Wraps Boxes. These seemingly ordinary shipping boxes pretend to contain boring home items, like a desk lamp or a grill, but secretly conceal the real gifts inside.

The retailer says it launched the boxes, available through Dec. 19, after research revealed that 57% of kids have found or opened gifts early, and that Gen Alpha asks parents about their gifts an average of 51 times (about twice a day) throughout the season. And 63% of parents say they’ve disguised gifts so they wouldn’t be discovered. About a third have even hidden a decoy gift to throw kids off the scent.

The boxes are available only to Lowe’s loyalty members and offered in select locations in Chicago, Charlotte, Dallas, Los Angeles, and New York.

Boxes also star in Whisker’s new “Merry Boxmas” holiday campaign for its Litter-Robots, with the parody launch of the Cardboard Box Pro, spoofing consumer-electronics ads. (It includes “flaps that flap.”) For cat owners — who already know nothing delights their felines more than an empty cardboard box — the $899 box comes with a free Litter-Robot 5 Pro, an AI-driven self-cleaning litter box.

The campaign also includes a 12-day social component, with shelter partnerships highlighting adoptable cats throughout December. That includes a local Detroit shelter, New Beginnings Animal Rescue, focusing on the 12 cats that have been there the longest, covering each adoption fee and gifting adopters a Litter-Robot. A similar partnership with Best Friends Animal Society will spotlight 12 adoptable cats across the country.

There’s also an opportunity for people to nominate their favorite shelter.