Heh, yes. But only because that means less optical drives in my closet. I needed it exactly once when my bank send me a mini-cd last year!
I will probably use it again once the wine port can play 32bit games (either with the DRM supported or i’ll patch it out.)
Edit: as for stuff like plastic figurines, that doesn’t seem that nice to me, it’s a bit wastefull to produce (and we don’t even have a good “model” to make some out of)
Anyone who doesn’t value optical drives is delusional at best 
Given some volunteers for the physical labor, much of the job could be arranged. But some points seem to me to cause the most problems :
1 - Shpping. Since we are talking worldwide, many people wouldn´t buy it due to shipping cost.
2 - When we finally agree on the picture for the box, the next release will be almost ready … 
My 8 year old gaming rig came with a dual-mode BD-ROM (BluRay and DVD/CD compatible). I must say BD-ROMs haven’t made much of a showing though.
out source it, presell only, no sale unless X units, there are tons of merch companies that do this.
We already have a design we used for the previous runs of CDs and DVDs. We can tweak it a bit and adjust it to the new box size.
There will be space for a few extra things, so we can add a screenshot or two and have a bit longer text.
We could also use different colors for each architecture. Probably not for the printed box itself, due to required production volumes, but at least for the DVDs.
I’ll definitely buy at least one box! 
Count me for at least one as well
I´m possibly forgetting something, but would EFI / some special configuration for the DVD allow to have the three architectures in the same disk ? That would help avoid having to produce three diferent sets of disks.
Also, I would be happy to help with the production, but since most users are in Europe, that is sadly not a possibility.
Maybe, but that’s not something we know how to do yet, and I’m not sure all 3 architectures would fit on a single dvd? Depends how big things get until we reach R1.
There are users all over the world. A lot are in Europe and North America, but there are active communities in south america, japan, new zealand and australia as well, and a few users in Africa as well. As far as I know, no one yet has reported using Haiku in Antarctica…
I’d buy one. Slackware was still doing physical media releases until there was a big snafu with the distributor.
I’m not yet convinced that such a box for Haiku will ever be done,but if you really make it,I’ll buy at least one as well (and maybe some more,to send to friends who still use Linux 
)
Whilst I like the idea of a big box release, I’m kind of wondering why we are already planning out how we are going to do this when we are still very far from a full release (as far as I understand).
I don’t like the idea of a kickstarter, as we’d support a plattform which is only making a profit by having some capital, not by producing some sort of product. Also there would then be an additional fee for the kickstarter we’d have to pay and for me it looks like kickstarter is not meant for the distribution of finished products.
Would it be possible to split up the distribution to multiple teams that concentrate on different continents? Because then orders could be split up into (for example) continents so things like shipping costs would be smaller which would also make the box cheaper. Maybe we could also find enough volunteers so we are not dependant on to many external companies which would again lower costs (provided enough people have enough time to spare)
We could maybe also use surveys to estimate how many people would buy a boxed copy (for a given price) so we could estimate and plan how many boxes we need for a first run
Really surveys are not going to do it. We need preorders. We don’t necessarily need to use kickstarter (there are other similar solutions) but we need something like this. Yes, they don’t “produce” anything but service. But that service is quite important: handling payments, refunds, etc. That is a nightmare on its own if you don’t do it through some company.
Splitting the manufacturing is probably not possible due to low volumes. Splitting the shipping is maybe possible, but it means someone receiving a 1000 or so boxes and then re-shipping them to other places. This is a challenge on its own, you need to package the boxes so they don’t get damaged in transport. You need to produce a few hundred more in case one of the shipments get lost (containers falling out of a cargo ship is a more common event than one would think). You have to figure out taxes in various countries.
I think the above answers half of this: doing a boxed release is a complicated thing. So it needs planning in advance. It’s a bit like if you asked “why do we bother writing code now as we are still very far from a release”. Doing the work now is how we get there. If we wait until the code is ready before we try to figure out how to do the boxed release, the box will ship with several month of delay, people will already have installed Haiku, and no one will want it anymore. It has to be ready for the big R1 release day, not a few months after. This way, people will be excited about the R1 release and will buy the box.
The other reason to think about it now is: don’t let the release schedule crush your dreams. If you want your own personal boxed edition of Haiku, I’m pretty sure you can also order a single printed cardboard box, or even design and print one yourself. Share your results. Maybe make a small batch of them as I did for the beta2 release (I still have DVDs, if someone wants to put them in big boxes, I can ship a few hundred to you!).
I think a DVD box is no longer up-to-date. A USB stick (usb-a / usb-c in combination) would be the more up-to-date solution.
There is also a wooden box that you could print on.
Is shipping inside the EU reasonably simple, or does it still have all the difficulties with taxes, customs, etc ?
If some of the areas with more people could be divided and covered, then those countries /regiions with less people could be managed by a few volunteers from those places., who would then fold and stuff the boxes, and pack them for shipping.
As said F1 team for undercut : “Box box” …
Still got BeOS and Zeta boxes.
It should be a way to make discovered the product to everyone if it will be find in computer shop… and apple center 
NB : Picture of Mandrake 7.2 (french linux distro equivalent of Redhat linux 6 so ~2001) is nice to see…