When this box set was released several years ago, I just couldn’t justify plunking down fifty bucks on a collection of songs that I, for the most part, had in it’s entirety on various vinyl releases. My roommate at the time was an even more rabid Misfits fan than I, and he was down at the record store the day it was released, plunking down a day’s worth of pay for a collection of songs that, he too, owned in full. We spent that night drinking cheap beer and listening to the entire set, start to finish, and I can’t say that either of us were disappointed. After the 100th song faded out and silence set in, I got up and hit play. The second time through was just as fun filled as the first.
Christmas came around this year, and I found I neat little package all wrapped up in Santa wrapping paper under the tree. It was noticeably coffin shaped, and though I wasn’t immediately sure of the contents (I do collect a lot of thing that come in coffin shaped boxes, believe it or not), I opened it up to find my very own Misfits box set. I couldn’t have been happier.
When I tore the shrink wrap off and opened the box, the first thing I noticed was the Cd cases. Two, double Cd jewel boxes lay inside, each featuring the classic Misfit’s logo: the Crimson Ghost skull. Now, early versions of this set, like the one my former roommate purchased, came with four separate Cd cases, each housing one of the Cd’s of the set. They were slim, sturdy black sleeves of plastic with the song titles printed on each case in raised, silver lettering. My version isn’t quite as extravagant, and I believe that the repressings of this set contain the newer versions of Cd housing as a cost reductive measure. Not surprising considering the former members of the Misfits always seem to be in some sort of legal entanglement with each other over money and royalties.
