Of all the anticipation over the last couple of years, this was not the way we expected The Beatles archive to manifest digitally. Fans can finally buy digital versions of the band’s recently remastered back catalogue - on a USB stick shaped like an apple.

It’s an homage to the band’s Apple Corps company, though looks more like a cartoon bomb to me, and shares online shelf space with Beatles coasters and baseball caps.

The stick, sold by The Beatles’ licenced online retailer Digital Stores, is available from December 7 for a hefty £200 ($279.99 U.S.), packing the band’s 14 albums in FLAC and 320Kbps MP3, artwork and a Flash interface. But availability is limited (just 100 in UK). Spotted by Mashable.

Of all the formats on which the remastered catalogue is available legally, online isn’t one of them. A deal is log-jammed because The Beatles’ Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) Corps wants to be paid for lost sales by EMI if consumers then share the MP3 files online, Paul McCartney recently said.

—In other digital Beatles news: EMI is suing BlueBeat, the site we wrote about this week that’s cheekily offering Beatles tracks for $0.25-a-pop. More on paidContent:UK...