From the bottom of my heart, er, box.....

[JayAre]

From what I've seen, there were four companies where you would take out the 2600 cart through the bottom of the box:  M Network, Mythicon, Panda and Imagic.  Although for Imagic, you could take it out through the top, by opening the flap; but I guess the intended purpose was to take it out through the bottom of the box.  But for the other three, you pretty much had to take out the cart through the bottom, unless you wanted to rip the flaps that held the cart in place.

 

Were there any other companies that did this?  Any idea why these companies chose to go with this box design?

 

[Lost Monkey]

I have a couple Atari and Activision boxes which have the cart "stopper" in the bottom.

[JayAre]

12 minutes ago, Lost Monkey said:

I have a couple Atari and Activision boxes which have the cart "stopper" in the bottom.

LM, for those games that you're referring to, do the carts come out through the top of the box?

[Lost Monkey]

The bottom.

[JayAre]

6 minutes ago, Lost Monkey said:

The bottom.

Thanks.

[neotokeo2001]

The boxes were meant to be a throwaway item. Most people did exactly that and couldn't have cared any less which way the box opened.

[WolfAmongWolves]

Are you sure the M Network boxes were meant to be opened from the bottom? I don't have Kool-Aid Man, but the M Network games I have are all meant to be opened from the top. The cart stopper is at the bottom, but you have to insert the cart from the top, with the thin part of the cart facing down. The thin part then fits snugly between the flaps of the cart stopper, with the wider part resting on top. If you opened the box from the bottom and tried to retrieve the cart, you would rip the cart stopper, because the wide part wouldn't fit through. Maybe M Network had different styles of boxes? 

 

Personally I'm not a big fan of the box style that opens from the bottom, especially the Imagic boxes. Even as a kid I loved the boxes and kept my games in them. I found the Imagic boxes annoying, because it was always hard to reinsert the cart tray all the way. It would often get caught on the top flap and stick out a half inch or so, and then you had to jiggle it around or open the top flap to insert it all the way.      

[JayAre]

1 hour ago, WolfAmongWolves said:

I don't have Kool-Aid Man, but the M Network games I have are all meant to be opened from the top.

Wolf, thanks for pointing that out.

 

All my M Network games have come shrinkwrapped, and the wider part of the cart has always been facing downward, so the only way to take it out was through the bottom of the box.  It had never occurred to me that you could put the cart back in through the top, but I just tried it, and you're absolutely right.  That got me thinking about the Mythicon and Panda boxes, but these boxes have flaps on the top of the box, so the only way to put the carts back in is through the bottom.  Pretty interesting.

 

And you're right about the Imagic boxes.  Sometimes you have to do a 180 flip with the cart tray to get it back inside the box, because of the top flap.

 

And how about the boxes from 20th Century Fox?  Pretty cool design, but it's a bit of work to open them up and close them back up again.

Edited September 19, 2020 by JayAre