Blu-ray SteelBooks are too often limited edition collectibles. Due to bad timing, I fear that this post should be read for informational purposes only. If you didn’t already place an order for the UK exclusive SteelBook release of Disney’s ‘Aladdin’, you may have missed the too-brief window.

Despite being a huge hit back in 1992, ‘Aladdin’ seems to have fallen out of favor with the powers-that-be at Disney. I guess the DVD release didn’t sell as well as expected. Since then, the studio has demoted the title out of the Diamond Collection, and has made no indication at all of a Blu-ray release in the United States.

However, with little fanfare, the movie was released on Blu-ray in Europe this year. Aaron recently reviewed a Dutch import copy. A comparable edition also became available in the UK this week.

For a brief time, UK retailer Zavvi.com posted a listing for an exclusive Limited Edition SteelBook with a street date of July 8th. I’d include a link to the listing, but the disc’s preorder appears to have sold out quickly and Zavvi has a frustrating habit of pulling down pages when a title goes out of stock. This one can no longer be found on the site. (The same thing happened with Zavvi’s ‘Roger Rabbit’ SteelBook, but orders for that one placed before the page disappeared were fulfilled on schedule.)

Here’s a look at the announced case design:

It looks pretty good. The artwork isn’t anywhere near as classy as the old Japanese Laserdisc box set, but it’s decent enough.

I was fortunate enough to put a preorder in while the listing was still active. I apologize for not posting this in time to give anyone else a heads-up to do the same.

This will no doubt be frustrating for a lot of people, especially for Disney collectors. Disney had a good run of releasing a lot of its animated movies in SteelBook or equivalent metal case formats, but stopped recently, allegedly after Metal Box manufacturer Viva was sued by Scanavo, the company behind the SteelBook brand. New Disney metal cases are few and far between. When one like this shows up, it should be an exciting event.