I'm not saying this is what happened, it probably isn't but bare with me...
When I worked for Blockbuster, Disney were (by far) the worst company to deal with. When DVDs first started, Blockbuster were able to buy releases from any other company at a realistic price and rent them. Disney didn't agree, they wanted to retain the high prices that we'd paid for rental VHS, even though, by that time there was no rental window period to speak of.
Basically, Blockbuster said no and for a while we didn't stock any Disney product. By the time it was resolved, Disney had taken off all the special features, slapped 'rental copy' on the spine and disc and dropped the price to around £20 (to us) rather than the £15 you could buy the retail version for (often from our shelves).
Hang in there...
Another issue was release dates. Disney were so obsessed with breaking release dates that we often didn't get a title until release day. This in a time when we had Titanic in store 2 weeks before release date. Fox trusted us, Disney didn't. It's possible Zavvi haven't had Maleficent sat in a warehouse for a week (didn't they only get CA: TWS on the Monday of release?). Even if they have, as someone said, you cant expect the warehouse guy who opens the box to know the item before doesn't look like the item listed on the website. Nor can you expect the guy who put the item on the website to go to the warehouse (which probably isn't even in the same town let alone building) to go and look to see if the product matches.
Don't forget, earlier this year Disney played hardball with Amazon. That's what they're like.
Besides, it's pretty common for products not to look the same as advertised (although they probably look more similar than they do in this case). I was surprised to see title of The Punisher too high on the spine (the mock up has it centralised). I was surprised to see the black border of Amazing Spider-Man 2 was so thick when the only image I saw from HMV had it a lot thinner.
How often have you bought an action figure that looks nothing like the picture on the back of the box?
How often have you received a DVD with both BBFC and IRL ratings on it, when only the BBFC one was shown?
How often have you opened a steelbook to find it's silver and not white? E.T. anyone? Or green, not blue? Umm, Jaws.
Did you expect Aliens to be gloss? I know I did.
Did you know that the 3D logo was a sticker on 300: Rise of an Empire? I know I didn't.
Anyway, it's a shame, but it happens. I've ordered plenty of things that didn't end up looking how I expected. I currently have the UK Batman 1966 Blu-ray set on order. Will it look like that when it comes out? No idea. Will Amazon update the picture before it arrives on my doorstep? No idea there either.
