Design (UK) from 1987 What do you think, did sending designers out to study other countries make these products better looking? The cassette TV is awesome but some of the other stuff is really dated. The microwave is hideous but they were super-popular with that model, everyone in an apartment had a similar unit, was it because of the new-wave design?
Back in the day, after seeing a picture just like that, my sister got my Father to call in our favourite audio shop (close to where he worked) and buy her a pink one based purely on the looks. She still has it. It could be appreciating due to https://www.spotern.com/en/spot/tv/...-millie-bobby-brown-in-stranger-things-s03e01 Probably due to the reduced market there don't seem to be any fun designs these days. Having collected old radios when Boomboxes were the latest thing, I have always liked the look of these:
Some of my tools are pretty nice looking, I have a lot of Makita and they put a lot of work into the design and ergonomics. Other than than, not much I have is "high industrial design" maybe that's why I collect these things, to have some variety from the stale TV's, phones and other boring consumer products.
Back when I would always browse through the latest Argos catalogue to see what was new I recall looking at the TV page and thinking"why have they put a picture of Venice at the top of the page". Looking more closely I could just make out the Samsung logo on a thin strip below the picture.
An interesting blurb about Hortex (Tecsonic in USA), small company but 82 Million USD in sales. I have a feeling most employees were for shipping products, everything else had to have been contracted out.
Outside of the pastel units in the mid-80's, I never saw the cool color boomboxes. From Mart Magazine 1985
AEC, Action Electronics had a few boomboxes in 1986, an ad is posted in the brochure thread below. It looks like they did some work for Radio Shack.
