Rocket Man - Japanese CD Single 'Snap-Pack'

Rocket Man was Kate’s second Japanese CD single release, which was issued in a long snap-pack case. For those of you that don’t know what a snap-pack is, it simply means that the packaging can be literally snapped and folded into a small square, rather than being left in its original 6.5” x 3.25” shape... which is the way it was originally sold. This type of CD single packaging is exclusive to Japan only, so you aren't going to see it anywhere else. As you can see, the packaging on mine has never been snapped and remains in its original intact size.

The front of the snap-pack uses the same artwork that's found on the UK release, but with the addition of some cool Japanese writing on the cover. The inside of the front cover has the lyrics for Rocket Man printed in both Japanese and English text.

The inlay tray for the CD, which is a 3” CD by the way, is divided horizontally at the halfway mark. This is where you can snap it, obviously, if you choose to. Personally, I think it would be quite stupid to snap these things due to their overall uniqueness. I also totally apologize if the CD is a little difficult to see.

The back portion of the CD cover features another photo of Kate, along with some distribution info in both English and Japanese. Unlike the UK 12” or CD single, the Japanese release doesn't feature the instrumental version of Candle In The Wind, which is no great loss if you ask me.

I've left one of my original photos here so that you can get a side look at the overall thickness of the packaging.

Snap-packs can be pretty scarce to come by, especially in an unsnapped condition.

Rocket Man - UK CD Digipak

I've decided to keep my original photos for this post on top of the new scans, so that people can get the full effect of this obnoxious thing.

This is the UK CD single for Rocket Man. When I got this back in 1991, I pretty much hated the packaging right away. I absolutely despise digipak packaging because it's cheap and nasty. Once you open something up that has digipak packaging, you can forget about keeping it in any kind of decent shape because the corners wear out fast. It also tends to get a lot of dents, scratches, rips, discolouring and lots of other wonderful things happening. Since I'm updating all of my old posts with new scans, I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to show you how quickly the packaging on these things can and do wear out, since you can't really see those things in my original photos.

The inside flips open in several different ways to reveal a few different black and white photos of Kate that were all taken from the same photo shoot.

When you look at the packaging unfolded in my photos and scans, you will clearly see where it's suffered the most wear and damage - and that's even with keeping it protected.

Overall, I'm not completely impressed with the packaging ideas for the CD or even with the 7" version of this single. The 7" single is just as bad, but for different reasons. That one comes with a wraparound folded poster, which usually suffers very badly.