Unnecessary, but Kind of Cool

A Dollar Tree store opened near our house, and Char loves shopping there. She often points at random items and exclaims, "Can you believe that's only a dollar?!" Just a small portion of her allowance will allow her to walk out with trinkets, candy, or snacks. It takes Char time, though. She's a thorough shopper. 

Slowly following her around can be a bit boring, so I kill time by flipping through the store's small selection of DVDs and Blu-rays.  That's where I had this idea.

One of the current trends on eBay is for sellers to offer games and movies as "disc and art only" or "disc only." Shipping is usually free for these sales because there's no clunky case to mail. I have bought a few discs this way when I want to see a movie that isn't on Netflix or on our other Roku channels (yes, we do live in 2021). 

Anyway, back to Dollar Tree. While Char was scrutinizing the stuffed animals, I spotted this Blu-ray:

No offense to the filmmakers, but I didn't want to watch Tim & Eric's Billon Dollar Movie. I wanted the two-disc case their movie came in. Getting a brand new Blu-ray case for a buck is a good deal.

When we got home, I replaced the artwork from this single disc movie that I bought at Goodwill and added the "disc only" movie I bought from eBay.

Tadaa! It's now a Secret Special Two-Disc Set of Ghost Rider 1 and 2!

Yes, I can buy the two-movie set on Amazon, but where's the fun in that?

This Harry Potter Blu-ray came from Goodwill with a three-disc case and a lenticular cover.

Heroes angle:

Villains angle:

Three-disc case:

I swapped Jensen Ames for Harry Potter, and now my Death Race double feature is really...

... a trilogy! I added the DR3 disc and placed its artwork in backwards so you can see it on the inside.

For the arts and crafts credit, I cut the Harry Potter lenticular artwork off the slip cover, taped a flat, promotional magnet to its back, and now Char can magically hang her papers on our fridge.

I'll keep the unused discs on a spindle and the artwork in a folder in case I change my mind. Empty cases will be reused, recycled, or stored in a box. 

This would work with soundtracks on CD, too. What's fun is the idea that you can make your own custom movie sets. 

I could combine Jaws with Deep Blue Sea...

...and even throw in a custom cover from eBay. Do you see the shark?

I've been brainstorming what other "sets" I can put together. The Cave and The Descent would make a scary, underground double bill.

These three Rocky films make a great trilogy.

I have a couple of SNL four-disc cases that I would enjoy repurposing. 

I can't tell if I'm being creative or if I'm just being weird. I suppose it doesn't matter. Projects like this are totally unnecessary, but they are kind of cool. At least I think so.

By the way, I wondered if Amazon was already selling a Nick Cage movie collection, and if so, what movies were in it? Surprisingly, "movie,""DVD," or "Blu-ray" didn't come up in Amazon's search engine when I typed in "Nick Cage":

I was curious what a Nick Cage blanket would look like...  

Ummm... wow. 

Knowing that products like this exsist and that people actually buy them is comforting. It makes messing around with movie cases feel much less weird.