Those little Panasonics look pretty nice, you'll really need to get close and personal, I've walked by some big three-piecers in the past that I thought were junk but turned out to be really nice after giving them the rundown.
Choice Magazine from Australia, price is in Australian Dollars. Some of the last big boomboxes from 1995.
Radioelektronik 2002, here's a link to the full issue if you want to read the chart. https://archive.org/details/Re082002OCR/page/n37/mode/2up?
Lots of discussion the http://www.stereo2go.com/forums/threads/walkman-designers.1276/page-4#post-47778 thread about industrial design and companies trying to appeal to the "Yoof" market. That Sony above is quite a good example. I'm not sure if this was started by Philips or Sony but it reminded me of an interesting article about the design of the Philips Roller Radio Cassette. http://ianwongresearch.blogspot.com/2011/11/murray-camens-philips-roller-radio.html I have to admit I bought a Roller 2 new back in 1989 purely for the looks and had it on my bookshelf along with much older radios. Its not really a new trend. In 1930s Britain radio company Ekco hired an architect to design a radio that looked like no other that had been made before http://www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld/objects/gd4NaSvOQHmgRr3aAF6JOA It is still one of the most collectable Valve/tube radios in the UK At the same time in the USA comapnies were using colored Catalin plastics to make very decorative cases This one is up to over $200 https://www.ebay.com/itm/265018039689 All examples of trying to use fancy cases to make a mundane product more exciting. Designers are still doing it. Look at the Toyota C-HR https://www.toyota.co.uk/new-cars/c-hr/ One of the first ones I saw had a personalised registration UF04Sue obviously bought to go with the styling.
Those boomers above are pretty late models, the organic or primary shapes started popping up around 87 when that Roller first went on sale. One of the first egg cars, the Ford Taurus, came out around the same time and was followed by everyone else going to rounded streamlined shapes with their car bodies. I always hated it, as a young design student it was fun drawing all these wacky colorful products but it was just way to trendy and they don't match anything. The Toyota is a nice looking car but if you put it next to a KIA and a Ford and a Nisson, I would be able to tell them apart from 30' away.
We got the Ford Sierra back in 1982 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Sierra#:~:text=The Ford Sierra is a,Spanish word for mountain range. The looks certainly divided opinion. Hyundai had an advert comparing it to a Jelly Mold. GM kept quiet as they were about to launch the 2nd generation Astra which looked similar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vauxhall_Astra Compare the angular first generation with the "organic" second gen.
Everything went bug-shaped, some designs look good with age but I don't see anybody collecting Taurus's or Sierras. Some of the rounded cars look ok with added ground-effects and widened wheel-wells but I'll stick with my classic E30. I will admit I kind of like the Kaboom, I don't own one and have never touched one but it looks like JVC was trying to make it practical, the rounded shape would be easy to carry with a strap.
Since seeing this I've been thinking you needed a better picture Bought new, I found Madonna "Confessions on a Dance Floor" in it so am blasting that this morning
Popular Mechanics January 1990 https://books.google.com/books?id=O...rce=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=true
Bell & Howell Bass Boom Box (rounded). The cassette recorder can be removed so it can be used separately. Later model, squared, with a radio: I see where Sony got its idea for a wireless speaker:
Holy cow that might be the earliest known sighting of the words. For those outside the USA, Bell + Howell was huge over here for school equipment, 8mm projectors and a bunch of other stuff. My first Apple II+ was black and branded Bell+Howell, they thought they could get into the school systems better using that branding (it worked!).
