DVD

For the upcoming father's day, Target, Best Buy, and Amazon are going head to head with their respective sales on the Back To The Future Trilogy on Blu-ray. Target and Amazon are both selling them $14.99, and Best Buy is making you shell out $24.99. I must have gone to 4 different Targets to find a box in decent condition, but in the end I had to settle for the standard beat up box. Target is run by a bunch of sadists that insist on putting spider straps on cardboard boxes and then twisting them so hard as if it was their nipples being damaged and not the movies themselves. This brought to my attention something I hadn't thought about in a while - horrible DVD packaging. I have to handle the Back To The Future Blu-ray set with kid gloves because if I don't, they'll probably explode into a fiery ball of death because it's shoddy design. You have to pry the discs out with the jaws of life. If you keep dropping the inner box because it keeps sliding out of the sleeve, I feel your pain. This made me start thinking of horribly designed box sets. The Alien Quadrilogy or any season of Star Trek: TNG both feel like accordions that you have to unravel to get to. Sliders Season 3 seems like it was a good idea spawned by a Japanese interior designer from 1989, with it's weird flimsy orange plastic shell and barely-holding-together feel. Band of Brothers is a pain to get out and felt like I had to dig to get to the bottom disc. The list could go on and on. I think the Batman set got it right, but why go convenient when you could make it WILD & CRAZY!!! 
 
Chime in with your personal experiences with crappy cases!

I was dissapointed in how cheaply the Star Trek: The Next Generation - Complete Series box set was. Green plastic covers and badly designed clear plastic sleeve.

Most of the Star Trek releases have been pretty shaky. I remember when TOS releases felt like you were a sea otter trying to crack into a clam.

I'm not sure how cases are different in the UK (where I am) but this thread can't pass without a mention of the frankly AWFUL cardboard cases all Warner Bros. DVDs used to come in. The disc is housed in a brittle plastic tray that a cardboard sleeve snaps onto. Wiki seems to say they were called snap cases and were slowly phased out, urgh, I hate them. They always always always shatter, particularly the spindle that holds the disc and they just look ugly on my shelf. Any time I order a pre-owned DVD (Cobra) on eBay and it turns up in one of those my heart sinks :(

Also there used to be a trend with box sets (region 2 version of Alien Quadrilogy for example) where the discs would be housed in a stack of clear plastic trays held together by nothing other than a strip of standard-ass sellotape along their spines. No, just, no.

Excellent mention Leakster! You could leave a dent in those damn cardboard cases just by looking at them the wrong way. I also hate the new recycled cases that companies are starting to use, where there's a big old "recycle" logo cut into the case. They're flimsy as all hell. The region 1 Alien Quadrilogy unfolds a gajillion times, so you have to lay it across a long surface to get to the back discs.

My three kings case is of poor quality:(

@subtlescreamer:

Agreed, eco cases. Haven't had too many of these, first I remember was Man Hunt.

Also hate the feeling of bending a disc trying to pry it from some holders. But after importing many releases, just relieved when everything arrived un-smashed.

@username: I've had that problem from time to time with old Blockbuster cases too. I'll tell you one thing though - after bringing back a crap load of Blu-rays from Vietnam, I'm happy I picked up a 10 pack of replacement cases from Amazon. Ack!

New adition - the bluray set for Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader has a horrible box. First off the whole thing is paper and feels like it's going to fall apart when you open it. Next, the dvd and bluray discs are glue inside two sleeves while the digital copy sits on a foam nub. It took me 10 minutes of cleaning to get all the glue and residue off the bluray. What the hell?