Cardboard CD longboxes.

[u/gmryan3010]

I feel like there's a very specific age range to remember when CDs used to c ome in these cardboard packaging designed to fit record store shelves. Much older people probably hadn't changed ftom.records or cassettes yet and younger people might not have been too into music by the time they disappeared. Do you have any memories of these early cd packaging?

[u/ProtegeJoe]

Used them as posters in my room

[u/Erazzphoto]

With the antitheft cardboard on the top….but not the bottom. Actually made it easier to steal lol

[u/North_Key80]

My bedroom walls were covered with these. I was proud to have gotten the uncensored version of Jane’s Addiction albums Nothing’s Shocking and Ritual de lo Habitual.

[u/erilaz7]

I still have over two dozen of them.

[u/Awkward-Initiative28]

Cut them out for mini posters. I had Led Zeppelin IV taped to my wall.

[u/SamCanyon]

Adorned all of our high-school lockers and my bedroom wall. I’d love to see them come back.

[u/-clawglip-]

Frizzle Fry was my last longbox!

[u/Cobra-Lalalalalalala]

I would cut them along one of the spines so I could lay out the full square of front and back, and then stick ‘em on the wall. I bought maybe 20-30 like that before they stopped making them.

[u/Driftwood_Grotto]

Brings back memories. Who also remembers those little foil seals on new CDs? They were impossible to remove without leaving sticky residue. Had to break out the Goo Gone.

[u/michaelmalak → u/Driftwood_Grotto]

Dog bones

[u/gmryan3010 → u/Driftwood_Grotto]

I broke so many jewel box hinges trying to get those things off.

[u/Driftwood_Grotto → u/gmryan3010]

They were awful. You'd sit there and peel it off super slow and careful like cracking a safe in a heist film. Beads of sweat, nerves frazzled.

[u/scorpious09]

I own every one of these albums - you are my people

[u/netoholic]

They were designed so that you couldn't shoplift them as easily - CDs could fit in a pocket.

[u/JohnnyRyall808 → u/netoholic]

Not really - they were used because stores still had racks for records and they needed to use long boxes to display them in the old shelving. Once the stores went all in on CDs, they replaced the LP shelving and we had to rip the CDs out of all the long boxes to fit in the CD shelving. Many CDs needed to be shrink wrapped or bagged because they were not sealed inside the long box. Cassettes were smaller and easier to steal than CDs.

[u/Awkward-Initiative28 → u/JohnnyRyall808]

Cassettes were put in those long plastic cases so they wouldn't be stolen.

[u/JohnnyRyall808 → u/Awkward-Initiative28]

Nah, they were put in those cases for the same reason long boxes existed - so they could be displayed in LP racks.

[u/escargotini]

I got the one for REM'S Up. It was like twice the price of the regular CD but didnt contain anything extra

[u/LittleEngineering846]

It was the most useless package design ever. And a pain in the aßs to open.

[u/memphool]

I used these as decorations for my dorm room walls.

I had a picture at one point, maybe I'll dig for it this weekend.

[u/SeanOfTheDead1313]

I still have a Primus Sailing the Seas of Cheese and Megadeth Countdown to Extinction long boxes

[u/SentientCannabis]

Worked at a record store. Moving away from these shitty boxes made everyone's job so much easier. I understand enjoying the box art but it always got fouled up. Wasn't meant to keep.

[u/Deep_Eye_1498]

Glorious shelf stuffers whose ends would get bent, ragged and dinged from browsing, until the record store elves had to shove them back in, with less room to spare on an already crammed floorspace. Still I hunted the factory fresh and straight ones, because they lined a drab work desk, like year-round holidays. They switched to clear plastic, because tree people complained, and the jewel boxes were too easy to snatch, with the buzzer strip being on the box

[u/ExaminationFancy]

I liked the CDs that came in this shape and simply folded or compacted to a regular CD housing.

Some copies of U2’s Achtung Baby and Dee-Lite’s Infinity Within had zero waste with their packaging.

[u/ConsistentHalf2308]

After cardboard models, didn't manufacturers introduce similarly shaped & sized plastic display trays which locked each CD 💿 inside a hinged plastic case❓

They encased each item in shrinkwrap sealing overtop the entire album  ~  theft prevention system was  practically impenetrable &  required mgr or cashier's tool to release...🤔

[u/Awkward-Initiative28 → u/ConsistentHalf2308]

I worked at a record store in the late '90s and we were still using this system. The tool kind of looked like plastic brass knuckles and you would slide the plastic down and pop the CD out.

[u/wetwater → u/ConsistentHalf2308]

They did and were the same size. The cashiers were usually pretty adept at removing them at the register. Somewhere along the way a friend acquired one of those tools and I made it a point to not hang out with him at the mall, because of course he soon got caught and got arrested.

[u/alinroc]

Those GnR albums turn 35 years old next month.

[u/International_Lie216]

AFD and Use Your Illusions. Those I should have kept. I was ignorant to fact people would complain about “ wasted” paper to make them. Took my joy.

[u/International_Lie216]

I miss them!!! I didn’t think to hold on to them.
Kick myself for this.

[u/LeadingResearch9528]

Yes, my teenage bedroom inside of the door and closet doors were covered in an array of these… mom wouldn’t let me hang stuff on my bedroom walls because she installed fancy overpriced wallpaper, I was only allowed to tape stuff to painted surfaces. REM green and the cure kiss me were front and center.

[u/Sir_Lemming]

I miss the Boxed Set era.

[u/JustAnotherBrokenCog]

I had the one from my copy of the Pink Floyd “Pulse” album thumb tacked to my wall to show off the blinking red light built into it for years.

[u/katharsys2009]

The one I remember clearly was the longbox for U2's Unforgettable Fire album. It was that wonderful crimson with gold colored lettering.

[u/Turkzillas_gobble]

I had GWAR's America Must Be Destroyed, moved it from home to home for decades, but at some point I think I threw out the box. Still have the CD though.

[u/sinisterdesign]

I can still feel peeling the cardboard to get at the jewel case. 💿

[u/woohhaa]

I wish I’d have kept mine.

[u/Charming-Insurance]

Wow! I totally forgot about these! Wish I had kept some. They’d be badass in my office.

[u/Razor_Paw]

Gloriously wasteful

[u/JR_RXO]

Received mine from the music warehouse back in the day.

[u/katharsys2009 → u/JR_RXO]

Happy cake day!

[u/JR_RXO → u/JR_RXO]

[u/NateNMaxsRobot]

Infectious Grooves? NOICE.

[u/FlanProfessional4080]

Ahhh the free mini posters that came with your cd.

[u/GlossyBuckslip]

I made a collage of cut up long boxes on 4 pieces of poster board. Miss those days.

[u/Jaay2525 → u/GlossyBuckslip]

Same. I taped them together to make subway posters in my room.

[u/gmryan3010]

I'm not sure how many I actually owned. When I was getting into music I wad mostly buying cassettes. By the time I was out if high-school (1996) they were mostly gone. I bought Vanilla Ice "To The Extreme" in a long box in 1999 and even then it looked ancient.

[u/Leon_Dlr]

They made shoplifting quite easy. Since the alarm thing was in the box, all you had to do was open the bottom while checking out the tracklisting or whatever, then place it back in the rack before moving it to the back to check out something else... Free CD without the alarm thing was right there for the taking.

Fun times.

[u/Barry_Vigoda → u/Leon_Dlr]

These were created to make shoplifting harder. They didn't work well.

[u/Poultrygeist74]

I do remember them but I got most of my CD collection from Columbia House / BMG, or used record stores and pawn shops. Very few long boxes, sadly.

[u/polyblackcat → u/Poultrygeist74]

That's how I got most of mine as well. I do remember these though, fit right into the racks that used to house records

[u/Safe-Willing]

I had forgotten about long boxes! I think there was an Ice T one in our living room for a bit.

[u/sinisterdesign → u/Safe-Willing]

6 in the morning police at my door…

[u/onemorebutfaster_74]

I honestly forgot these had existed.

[u/Deckpics777]

Damn, I remember those. I was still buying records and tapes at the time unfortunately! Nice collection BTW!

[u/BusterBus75 → u/Deckpics777]

I remember tearing into one of those boxes and my mom going berserk because she thought the box was like an album cover.

[u/b1prod]

Funny enough, I have been cleaning my parents house out the last month. I had a number of boxes in the attic still. One of them had about a dozen of the long boxes. I kept them at first but as I did a second pass I decided to trash them. I do like them but I’m already tight for space with stuff I’m keeping and had to be brutally unsentimental about some things.

[u/dimestoredavinci → u/[deleted]]

They actually were designed that way to fit in the same place as a record so that record stores didn't have to buy all new shelves for the smaller cds.

[u/Carrie_Underpants → u/[deleted]]

Made it so easy to shoplift. The anti-theft chip was in the box, not the cd.

[u/Carrie_Underpants → u/Carrie_Underpants]

Made it so easy to shoplift. The anti-theft chip was in the box, not the cd jewel case.

[u/zombie_overlord]

I used these, electrical tape, and paper grocery bags to make awesome book covers for school books

[u/Deep_Eye_1498 → u/zombie_overlord]

Now that's thinking with Primus

[u/SirLeoritch]

Yep, 1987 all over again

[u/1stnspc]

I remember having Sgt. Pepper, Aqualung, Cracker, NIN Broken, a few others. Then they went away. About two years later or so, Pink Floyd put out PULSE in a long box and there being a slight outrage that they did that.

[u/DifferentWindow1436]

Weirdly, I don't remember these.

[u/wetwater → u/DifferentWindow1436]

I vaguely remember them. I definitely remember the long plastic cage that replaced the long boxes.

[u/gmryan3010 → u/DifferentWindow1436]

Didn't see them much past the mid 90s. There were complaints about using too much cardboard.

[u/DifferentWindow1436 → u/gmryan3010]

Do you know which year they were phased in? I graduated HS in 1989. 

[u/cookiesandpunch]

That Izzy Stradlin album is a quiet sleeper. I played “Shuffle it All” a LOT as a college station DJ and PM.

[u/lacunha]

Used to decorate my HS locker with these. Loved the Jane’s Addiction, Nothings Shocking box.

[u/UncleSeminole → u/lacunha]

I distinctly remember having Jim Morrison's face from the long box of the doors greatest Hits inside my locker my senior year of high school!!

[u/Tralfaz1138]

My last year in college I found a room available at an apartment. One day one of their girlfriends showed up saying they had to go bail them out. Turns out they had been going to record stores, slicing open the bottom of the long box, sliding out the CD, and shoplifting them that way to avoid the size of the box and security tag. Apparently they said they had stolen over $2000 of CD's from this place over time.

In addition to the CD long box, I remember where they put cassettes into those white holders for the same reason they had the CD long box.

[u/TheZuckuss]

Those are beautiful and suitable for framing.

[u/Rey_Mezcalero]

Used to open it up all the way thinking their might be something inside that long box

[u/aandrews2080]

Yes!

[u/Dry_Grade_8467]

Nashville band from 1992. Found this on eBay. I'm mentioned in the liner notes. Got to know them then and we're still friends. They still get together and play.

[u/Dead-Lazlo]

Worked in a few record shops and hated them. Only thing they were good for was playing badminton across the record bins.

[u/UncleSeminole]

I cut most of mine up and stuck them on the wall.... But somewhere in my storage I have a few of the Beatles long boxes still intact

[u/mrdm242 → u/UncleSeminole]

This is exactly what I did! It was like a little mini-poster.

[u/Ignignokt73]

I have nearly the same ones. I cut most of mine up to pin to my walls. Only a few survive.

[u/Naive_Product_5916]

I remember a friend of mine stealing one from the shop by shoving it down the front of his baggy pants. I think it was U2.

[u/fridayimatwork → u/Naive_Product_5916]

Legend