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Priceless ornaments or cheap tat? The wackiest Limited Edition DVD box sets

Movies hit cinemas and six months later they come out on DVD and Blu Ray - it's just the way things are. Not content with this however, studios will often release films all over again so long as they're cash cows ripe for milking that have fans with money to burn.

Cynical? Perhaps. Limited Edition box sets do have some merit occasionally, tying series together into a a neat little package, but other times they're just pure tat.



[Related story: Harry Potter stars unveil secrets inside Wizard's Collection box set]

Following the recently announced special edition of 'E.T', which comes with its very own miniature spaceship, we decided to look at some of the good, bad and ugly limited edition box sets...

Both 'Scarface' and 'Terminator 2' are undoubtedly cracking films, however, one of these packages would look nice on your shelf and the other, well, is a big metal skull.

Two of the summer's biggest blockbusters formed parts of big cinematic series. 'Prometheus' was the Ridley Scott prequel to the 'Alien' franchise he began and 'Avengers Assemble' is the climatic event movie that five prior superhero flicks built towards. Both have big collections set for release.

Marvel's Phase One box set (featuring both 'Iron Man' films, 'The Incredible Hulk, 'Thor', 'Captain America' and 'Avengers' comes in a suitcase modelled on the one in the film that carries the Tesseract. It also comes with lots of neat extras and specially designed (lovely) cover art for each of the films. Do you want a Tesseract on your shelf? We probably don't.

'The Amazing Spider-Man' put slightly less effort into its special edition. Throwing in the standard 2-disc Blu Ray version, the 3D Blu Ray version and the DVD. Add something here.

Classic films need love too, and they're getting it in abundance as they head over to Blu Ray for the first time. That's the case with 'E.T' and other Spielberg classic 'Jaws', out next week, which comes with a smaller (much smaller) version of the spaceship from the end of the film that takes ET home. It looks like a Happy Meal toy.

The Lebowski set comes in a bowling bowl, which is both a nice reference to the film and not entirely unpleasant on the eye. Kudos.

The upcoming Harry Potter 'Wizard's Collection' is a brilliantly thought out set with a wealth of trinkets and extras aside from the eight films that formed the hugely successful series. Classy work, as usual, from Team Potter.

To celebrate the 25th anniversary of Ridley Scott's classic 'Alien', a set was released putting each of the then-four films into one Xenomorph skull. Quite stark and impressive, the head looks good compared to similarly outlandish sets and the collections comes with over 40 hours of bonus material.

Are there any sets we've missed out that take pride of place in your collections? Let us know below...