#longbox

My recent blog about trash got me to thinking more about packaging. In that blog I mentioned that packaging protects, promotes, provides information, and prevents theft. When it comes to food products, there are myriad laws regulating the type and amount of information provided on the package, including the very fine print that says “Serving Size Suggestion” next to a photo of that item. Manufacturers aren’t providing all of that information because they are nice people.

But there can also be other more nuanced purposes, a product with which I once had a lot of experience: The CD long box.

These were used long before the vast majority of my students were born, although I know there were a few of you around as kids, and you might thus remember them. The CD player was introduced in the US in 1982 by Sony, and it was the start of a revolution in recording media. Everything else we owned—vinyl LPs, cassettes, and 8-track tapes—were now functionally obsolete. As much as we hated to see the old items start their long fade, we knew it was inevitable, that we would one day be buying shiny little discs.

There was, naturally, a transitional period, in which you could find most of the formats, although I am pretty certain that 8-track tapes had already died their slow, painful death. It was tough on retailers having to stock so much product, which effectively resulted in redundancies. A new rock album, for example, might be on CD, vinyl, and cassette all at the same time.

I bought my first CD player in 1985, when titles were still few and far between. Classical albums were the first to get the CD treatment, followed a couple of years later by rock. The first disc in my new collection was Van Halen’s 1984, an album that has aged rather well in the last four decades. Country CDs—I suppose country music fans weren’t as technologically savvy back then—didn’t become widely available until about 1990.

Retailers had plenty of the 12-inch storage bins that were used to display vinyl records, but they had nothing for CDs. That’s where the long box came in handy, with the disc in its plastic case, and then placed in a paperboard outer box twice the height needed. Problem solved. These could stand side-by-side in those old bins, and they had the height necessary so they could be seen.

The long box also made it more difficult to shoplift, because you would need pretty deep pockets in your trench coat to pull it off. This, of course, was before electronic anti-theft stick-ons.

But there was one more thing that the industry didn’t realize would be so important: the long box became a place where the album art could shine. Next time you’re in or near a vintage vinyl shop, stick your head in and examine just how prominent album art was 40-50 years ago. They caught the eye. Even today, Pink Floyd’s Dark Side Of The Moon album cover is a popular graphic. I see it on t-shirts now.

Fans loved that art, and it promoted the album as much as the name of the band itself.

Of course, the anti-theft devices came along pretty soon, as did retail shelving units that accommodated a much smaller product. Suddenly the album art was shrunk to fit into the glossy paper insert that also included all credits and the lyrics, inevitably in a font that could not be seen without a magnifying glass.

That all seems so quaint now as we view things through the lens of digital releases and streaming services. Artwork? What artwork? Good luck even finding CDs for sale at any retailer these days, unless it is a specialty shop. Tangible media is about as 20th century as you can get.

What about all of those fancy long boxes, though? I hated getting rid of them for a while, because the artwork was often compelling, as much as how the paperboard sleeve of the 12-inch vinyl was. I felt bad throwing it away. Eventually, though, I gave in and realized that with CDs, the album art wasn’t there to appeal to my sense of aesthetics, but rather just to promote the disc at most. You weren’t supposed to actually enjoy it.

In other words, it was trash, and off they went to a landfill, first in southern Indiana where I was living, and then right here in Canyon America.

Think about this the next time you buy a packaged anything…food, technology, clothing, whatever. You may wind up with a pile of rubbish at your feet, especially if it is a 75” TV. You may curse the packaging, like when we have to break into the package for a new SD card. You may chuckle at how an anthropomorphic character is used to sell sugary breakfast cereals to kids.

And then you will do just like me: Toss it in the dumpster. Its purposes were served, and while we are contributing to the size of our landfills, there’s not a whole lot we can do, especially if it involves buying things in stores. Fresh food is one thing, but even prepared foods have to be packaged. Man cannot live on broccoli alone.

Short of imposing a moratorium on buying things, we are stuck in an endless trash loop. I wonder if the CD long box from that Van Halen album has biodegraded yet.

Dr “What A Great Album!” Gerlich

CD longbox for the Game Theory compilation, Tinker to Evers to Chance, released by U.S. label Engima Records in 1990.

I feel like this object is a pretty good generational test, like that meme with the cassette tape and the pencil or knowing that the lowest frequency is on an FM dial. Though I guess this one is a bit more obscure, since this particular object had a very brief life and—unlike cassettes and FM radio—has disappeared altogether from the musical landscape.

What am I talking about? The controversial CD longbox.

Introduced sometime in the eighties as a means to both prevent shoplifting of those pricey little compact discs and fit them into existing vinyl LP racks, the CD longbox was a packaging solution that met its end in 1993. There were objections raised about the consumer waste generated from the cardboard packaging, and the labels themselves considered them an additional expense. And they became lost artifacts for the most part since most people just threw them away after they’d opened their compact disc.

But not me! Even though there was no obvious place to store these things (in with my LPs?), I kept and have managed to hold on to about six or seven longboxes. This box for Tinkers to Evers to Chance is one in my small collection.