Stop Making Box Sets in the Shape of People’s Heads

We here at Media Magpies tend to be big supporters of physical media as a concept. I personally need more and better storage racks for my collection, and we’ve talked about the things we’d cheerfully acquire from the Criterion Closet that no one else has. “There are not enough shelves” is a perpetual problem. Members of our Patreon-only Discord can see the occasional discussion wherein someone is talking about reorganizing their collection, be it movies or music or books or what have you. We’re big fans of the whole thing. And therefore no one is as appropriate as we are to complain about stupid, impossible-to-shelve box sets.

It is surprisingly hard to find a copy of the Amazing Spider-Man 2 DVD release that came packaged in Jamie Foxx’s head. And the problem with that is that the lessons we learned from that release keep needing to be relearned. It’s not as bad as the box set in the shape of an alien-queen head where the discs are the brain, but it’s still bad. It’s ugly, and where do you put it? My partner knew someone who was single and lived in a two-bedroom apartment and displayed all of his collectible box sets, but for some of us, space is at a premium. We already don’t have enough shelves.

The desire to make box sets shaped like heads is something that apparently comes to a lot of companies. There’s the Simpsons head releases. Jamie Foxx’s head. The Speed Racer fiftieth anniversary release was shaped like Speed’s head. The alien head. Why do we do this? This is one of those sentences that looks really bad out of context, but heads are not optimally shaped for storage. In theory, the Simpsons ones fit on a shelf with your other DVDs, but few shelves are tall enough to fit them, since they’re taller than normal boxes.

And this is, apparently, still better than the Krusty-themed season, where they leaned into how krap Krusty merchandise kanonically is and the discs were loose in the box. This is a terrible idea if you plan to, you know, actually watch the discs. Which I for one buy the discs to do. Enormous numbers of these sets are impractical to actually use the discs from, to the point that there are apparently instructions in the Back to the Future collectible edition on how to remove the disc. You shouldn’t need to do that. That’s never a good idea.

In my digging around—there aren’t a lot of good lists of these abominations—I discovered a video wherein someone actually rebuilds their Californication box set to better store the discs in it. Because the original packaging is so flimsy that discs fall out. Conversely, there’s the sets where the discs are so tightly in place that you’re afraid you’re going to break them by taking them out. In this video, the guy has acquired a sturdy slipcase the size of, you know, a DVD set. He bought plain clear boxes that hold two DVDs each on Amazon. And the slipcase came with each season’s art to put inside those boxes. And look, it’s a box.

Breaking Bad had a box set that came in a replica barrel. The Golden Girls had one that came in a cardboard purse. A Series That Shall Remain Nameless has come in trunks and castles and trains and my Gods why hasn’t it come in someone’s head? Giant Robo came in a large plastic eye not dissimilar to the plastic bowling ball you could get The Big Lebowski in. Many shows come in houses—Invader Zim and Full House and Little House on the Prairie. Scooby Doo and King of Queens and The A-Team all came in vehicles. Rambo came in a grenade and Die Hard came in the Nakatomi Plaza. A lot of things come in coffins and The Masters of Horror Season 2 came in a skull.

These are all, without fail, terrible choices. Personally I don’t think you need the 2009 Star Trek at all, but you certainly don’t need it in a plastic Enterprise. Lost came in a truncated pyramid. Home Improvement came in a cardboard tool box. Under the Dome came under a dome. And every time I see one of these, all I can think is that the person who decided it was a good idea had never actually tried to use the package. Schindler’s List didn’t need to come in a plexiglass case.

I suppose it bothers me less if the set comes with something. A statue, an apron, a poster, a commemorative book—you can display those, or use them in the case of my Singin’ in the Rain umbrella, and it’s not something you have to figure out. DVD racks are standardized for a reason; DVDs are more standardized than books, and I already have problems with bookshelves. I can’t imagine how frustrating it would be if I wanted, say, the Get Smart movie—no one wants the Get Smart movie—which came in a goddamn shoe phone.

I thought it was frustrating that The Tudors came in one of those boxes that isn’t designed to be put on any shelf. It’s nearly a foot long despite being roughly the same dimensions as a DVD box in height and about the thickness of two of them. Where do you store that? It doesn’t fit on my DVD rack. It doesn’t fit on most of my bookshelves. It got rereleased as, you know, a reasonable box. That fits on a rack. As God intended. How is this so difficult to understand?