Longbox

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A longbox is a form of cardboard packaging for musical compact discs in widespread use in North America in the 1980s and early 1990s.

When record stores first began carrying compact discs, the longboxes served to make them fit into the bins originally used for vinyl records. Longboxes were about twelve inches high and capable of containing two separate discs when necessary. Most longboxes were full color, with details about the compact disc on the back, and artwork that was frequently taken from the original square album cover art, reworked for the new shape and size. There were generic white longboxes with windows that would display the compact disc cover, as well as clear plastic versions that were an inexpensive substitute for a printed longbox.

In addition, longboxes served as a means of directly transferring album artwork designed for cassette boxes. In the mid-1980s, cassettes surpassed vinyl records in sales, and thus most album cover art during that period was originally designed for a rectangular case. Albums originally released on cassette, then later on compact disc, often needed altered or alternate cover art to fit the jewel case. When compact discs surpassed cassette sales in the early 1990s, the square case prompted album art to revert back to a square design as it had been with vinyl, and helped urge the change away from longboxes.

There was some resistance by merchants to the discontinuation of longboxes, since they theoretically made it harder for shoplifters to hide the items. Environmental concerns of unnecessary cardboard waste finally eliminated the longbox. Stores also stopped selling vinyl records and converted their displays to accommodate shrink-wrapped jewel cases. Several proposals for new types of packaging that served its display-size and theft-prevention goals were developed. That function of the longbox was replaced by locking plastic frames containing theft detection strips, some of which were designed to roughly the same dimensions as the longbox so that they would fit into the same racks in a record store. Since most longboxes were discarded, they have become a collectible. A compact disc is worth more if it is accompanied by its original longbox.

The parody band Spinal Tap released a studio album, Break Like the Wind, in an extra-long longbox as a (perhaps intentionally unintelligent) dig at critics of the packaging.

Longboxes are still occasionally used by warehouse clubs such as Costco for both CD and DVD packaging, but are largely unknown elsewhere.