Holiday Gift Pack

AMG Review of Holiday Gift Pack

Andrew Leahey
All Music Guide

Poison enjoyed a rare resurgence in the mid-2000s, with their greatest-hits compilation charting in the Billboard Top 20 and their covers album (the surprisingly likable Poison'd!) selling over 20,000 copies in its first week. To top it off, Bret Michaels spent the summer of 2007 as a rechristened television star, giving VH1 some of its highest ratings ever with the reality dating show Rock of Love. Poison may be an aging band, but the bandmates (as well as their label, Capitol Records) are far from stupid; they know to strike when the iron's hot, and -- in an attempt to make more dough off material that has already been released -- they've combined several discs into this Holiday Gift Pack. The Best of Poison: 20 Years of Rock and Poison'd! are both included, as is the Greatest Video Hits DVD that first appeared in 2001 and was later packaged with deluxe versions of the Best Of comp. Most Poison fans already own this material, and the no-frills packaging and lack of fancy liner notes make a poor case for purchasing it again. But for those who first encountered Poison through the Rock of Love series, Holiday Gift Pack is a good introduction to the band's audio and visual appeal, complete with 30-plus tracks of blue-collar hair metal and 17 glitzy videos.