"The Kiosk Collection (Portuguese Edition)" - U2

Album Collection

Track Listing:

Background Information

In September 2015, a box set was announced for Spain called “The Kiosk Collection” featuring 14 of U2’s albums on CD and 4 of U2’s video releases on DVD. The set was released in conjunction with El Pais, a daily newspaper in Spain, and each week would see the release of one album. The first release was timed to correspond with U2 playing in Spain on the U2ieTour. The pressings in this set are done in Germany for the Spanish release.

On August 26, 2016, U2 started another of these box sets in Italy called “The Italian Collection” with one disc released per month, ending in December 2016. In this case the box was very different, and the discs are different pressings done in Austria for the collection.

Starting on November 10, 2016, a new set of discs started to appear in Portugal. In Portugal the set was done in conjunction with the Correio de Manha newspaper. However, these are not new discs, and at this point in the set, they have been the same German pressings that were used in the Spanish Kiosk Collection each week. However some differences have been noted which we will mention below:

  • “The Joshua Tree” CD and box are the same as the Spanish set, however they are packaged on a card that has information in Portuguese instead of the original card used in Spain for the Kiosk Collection.
  • Both “Achtung Baby” and “Songs of Innocence” were issued on a large backing card as well, and in both cases the card is different than what is used for the Spanish collection, even if the CDs are the same pressings.
  • Each individual release in the Spanish collection had a UPC sticker on the back of the CD outside of the stretch wrap. The Portuguese collection adds a second sticker with some text pertaining to the release.
  • The replacement version of “Boy” is a new pressing from 2017, and is not the same replacement version used in the Spanish collection.
  • Both “Boy” and “Zooropa” use the artwork from “The Italian Collection” CDs instead of the Spanish Kiosk artwork. In the case of “All That You Can’t Leave Behind” this fixes a spelling error. However these cases are not the same thickness as those in “The Italian Collection” and are indeed the same size as the other releases in “The Kiosk Collection” (Thicker cases were used).

The full release schedule of these CDs is as follows:

  • The Joshua Tree (November 10, 2016)
  • Achtung Baby (November 17, 2016)
  • Songs of Innocence (November 24, 2016)
  • Rattle and Hum (December 1, 2016)
  • The Unforgettable Fire (December 8, 2016)
  • War (December 15, 2016)
  • Boy (December 22, 2016)
  • Zooropa (December 29, 2016)
  • All That You Can’t Leave Behind (January 5, 2017)
  • October (January 12, 2017)
  • How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb (January 19, 2017)
  • Under a Blood Red Sky (January 26, 2017)
  • Pop (February 2, 2017)
  • No Line on the Horizon (February 9, 2017)
  • U2360 at the Rose Bowl (February 16, 2017)
  • U2 Go Home: Live at Slane (February 23, 2017)
  • Zoo TV Live from Sydney (March 2, 2017)
  • Live at Red Rocks (March 9, 2017)

During the release of the Spanish set, there was a quality issue with the “Boy” release, and instead of “Boy” being pressed on the disc, a small number of copies made it into the market where the CD plays “Pocta Jarovi Filipovi: Jarove Pesnicky” a Slovakian compilation CD that was a tribute to Jarove Persnicky. The Spanish distributors pulled most of the product from the market before the CDs went on sale so only a small number of these made it into the secondary market.

The exact same error was made with the Portuguese edition. Once again instead of being sent copies of “Boy” the CD includes “Pocta Jarovi Filipovi: Jarove Pesnicky” although visually it looks like “Boy”. This time however, instead of being caught before distribution, these were sold to market, and as such a number have now shown up from the Portuguese set with this mispressing. The “Zooropa” CD which followed a week later asked that people wishing to replace the “Boy” CD hold onto the one they got in error, and they would later be able to trade it back for the correct CD. The replacement CD issued did not come in a digipack as the Spanish ones did, instead it came in a plain white CD sleeve with a plastic window.

The replacement envelope is marked “Este CD substitui o exemplar includo no album U2 Boy distribudo anteriormente” and included the album name and a bar code. The text translates to “This CD replaces the copy included in the previously distributed U2 Boy album”. This is not the same CD issued in Spain to replace the CD there when this issued occurred, and is a new 2016 pressing done by MPO.ES in Spain.

At this point, releases are still coming out for this collection, and it is due to wrap up in March 2017.

Liner Notes

Related Promotional Videos

Related News

Catalog of Releases