← Apple Albums Released in Canada
As a general rule for Canadian Beatles reel tapes, both the tapes and boxes were manufactured in Canada, but slicks were often made by using US artwork. The best way to distinguish the Canadian pressings from the US issues is the Color of the box: Canada always used WHITE cardboard boxes, while the USA used either BROWN or BLUE boxes.
That being said, it is not known if Apple albums were ever produced in the reel format in Canada (with a white box) - All examples found to date are US brown box tapes, which might have been imported to Canada instead of being manufactured here. Until a Canadian Apple tape is documented, the present archive only lists the Gold Box Series for Apple reels.
Beatles 8 Track releases are usually found in five main series produced in Canada between 1968 and 1980: White shell with white paper labels, Transitional hybrid configurations, Black shell (AMPEX Datapack), Black shell (Lear Jet) and Black Shell (Capitol) many of which have their own "sub-variations". See the TAPES section for more details.
Canada started pressing Beatles compact discs in April 1990, as the "official" Beatles catalogue was being standardized through the CLJ and CD series. Early copies were pressed by Disque Americ, while later copies were pressed by Cinram and EMI, before turning to imports since 2014. Keep in mind that throughout these pressing periods, CDs were also sporadically imported from the US and the EU to meet demand.
Capitol often prepared promotional flats (one-sided displays for shops) where the front cover of the album was made as a mockup of the actual record jacket. Often these were the front slick over a simple or double piece of cardboard with a blank back (see Long Tall Sally for another example). This example here seems to be a jacket frame with only a front slick, off which the back part of the frame was cut out (Many of these had a die-cut triangular foldable flap allowing the display to stand on a table, this is what seems to have been cut out). Later promo flats from the 1980s are simply printed on a single piece of cardboard (like a one-sided posterboard).
Promotional Flat, early 1970s, 12X12"
