July 18 [14:00 EDT] -- The Scorpions have been stung by some retail music distributors who feel the cover of the band's double-CD retrospective package (see photo) is too suggestive.

The group had planned to release "Deadly Sting - The Mercury Years" with a cover featuring an army of scorpions crawling toward a naked woman kneeling on the ground. While a well-placed arm and some convenient shading insure that all necessary parts are covered, some have balked at the fact that a few scorpions are actually crawling on the woman's thighs and seemed to be headed toward, well, places where scorpions really shouldn't be.

When the double-CD hit stores on July 15, it arrived with two different covers: the original and one in which the woman has been removed and only the stinging creatures remain. The offending original artwork was originally intended for the cover of the German metal outfit's "Sexual Amusement" album, but was pulled for similar reasons before the album's release in 1988.