Thanks! I can only laugh about my assumption (that they were two different boxes, not different sides of the same box) -- at least I had the good sense to know I didn't have enough evidence to be sure, and didn't put such misinformation on my site...
Still, I do have evidence that one of those Plus boxes (in the photos I posted) held a 1986 beige Plus, while the other held a 1987 platinum unit. So it would seem the outer box didn't change in 1987, but everything inside -- the manual, the software bundle, and the machine itself -- did change.
To follow up on the 512Ke -- assuming I was equally wrong about those two photos, we can draw the same conclusion, except Apple also didn't change the manual and the software bundle. Only the machine itself changed in 1987 -- the box, the manual, and the software bundle remained the same.