Longbox

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

When compact discs first began to appear in the retail stores, the longbox packaging served a transitional purpose, allowing shops to file new compact discs in the same bins originally used for vinyl records. Longboxes were 12" tall, 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.

Placing the jewelcase within a cardboard enclosure made for a larger and more cumbersome package that would be more difficult to shoplift from retailers.

Longboxes began to fade from popularity as the CDs themselves became more colorful (labels initially printed CDs with a plain black-on-silver appearance). Longboxes were also considered environmentally wasteful and were expensive to produce. In North America, the drive to eliminate longboxes took hold in Canada first.

Environmental concerns of unnecessary cardboard waste from artists and consumers alike created controversy over continued use of longboxes. For instance, David Byrne included a sticker over the packaging of his album Uh-Oh reading "THIS IS GARBAGE", referring to the excessive material use of the packaging and encouraged customers to complain to retailers, while musicians like Raffi and Peter Gabriel simply refused to have their material packaged with a longbox. In 1990, the Earth Communications Office, a coalition formed within the US entertainment industry focused on the environment, launched a movement called “Ban the Box” in an effort to eliminate longboxes. The satirical band Spinal Tap's 1992 studio album Break Like the Wind was sold in an "extra-long box" (an 18-inch longbox).

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