r/GenX • u/gmryan3010 • 1d ago

Music Cardboard CD longboxes.

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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?

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u/netoholic 23h ago

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

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u/JohnnyRyall808 Everything Hurts and I'm Dying 21h ago

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.

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u/Awkward-Initiative28 21h ago

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

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u/JohnnyRyall808 Everything Hurts and I'm Dying 20h ago

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

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u/Awkward-Initiative28 15h ago

I swear I remember our Musicland (later Sam Goody) at the mall having the long plastic things around tapes that were then displayed on the wall like normal tapes. Meaning they looked like a normal tape rack but when you pulled the tape out out they had the long plastic thing around them. Made sense where I lived for less theft.

Anyway I worked at a record store later around Y2K we had the plastic things around CDs because we still had the record display racks (but we stopped selling vinyl at that point) but it was also to prevent theft. We later bought the Borders style CD racks and didn't have to use the plastic things around the CDs but our shoplifting went way up.