The Ugly Mountain!

[Xenon Explosion]

Okay, so I've tried to figure this out for quite some time, but couldn't come up with an explanation so here's the post. Occasionally, I've come across a few "Ugly Mountain" disk labels as I lovingly refer to them as. These are usually just a few in a set of disks, but sometimes the whole set is made up of these "Ugly Mountain" labels.

The reason for the nickname is mostly due to the awful picture of Half Dome that appears on these. Zoomed in, off-color, and off-center. But also, these labels are of a much thinner quality so the color of the disk shows through the label giving it a "dirty" look. (I thought it might be the glue coming up from the bottom, but it's not.) Also, they're not smooth and glossy like the normal Sierra labels, except on the picture of Half Dome.

At first, I thought these were bootleg copies but it turns out that they're way too common for that to be the case, and appear too randomly within sets of disks.

The most I have found is in my Sierra Value Pack where most of Manhunter 2 and all of Hoyle's Book Of Games are on the Ugly Mountain labels. Here is a sample of the Ugly versions compared to the Nice versions we're used to seeing:

UGLY:


NICE:


UGLY:


NICE:


So anyone have any ideas about these? Were they a printing mistake that cost too much money so they decided to use them anyway (as with the EcoQuest hintbooks)? Were these done on purpose to distinguish "regular" copies from "value packs"? Or are they actually bootlegs indeed?

This should get the conversation going!

-Tom.

[DaveJustDave]

I think you've been smoking too many boles.

Actually I went home for lunch and looked through my collection and found several "ugly" mountain disks as well.

[QuestCollector]

Interesting. I never noticed this before on the disks. I will have to check through my collection to see what my disks are all like. It does seem strange that the labels would be different in the same game. Great find though.

[Xenon Explosion]

[Darv]

The differnce in disks within the same box is usually attributed to Sierra's recycling and repackaging of retuned product. Often large stores would return inventories of unsold product which Sierra would open, then repackage. Over time the images on the disks were changed and when recycled they would get mixed up. The number order on the disk was the main concern, not the image printed on it thus it didn't matter if the disks had mixed images.

Sierra did a lot of recycling even before it became popular to do so.

Cheers,

[FesterBlatz]

[Xenon Explosion]

[Darv]