I never knew they made boomers, maybe they didn't. A&D (AKAI & Diatone) was known for higer end component tape decks but here's a cut sheet for a very rare model which is a Sharp QT-30CD rebadged. It looks like it's from the late 90's but I don't know.
I'm sure this photo is older than the late 90s... those fashions and art styles are definitely more like the late 80s. The Sharp variant of this seems to be from around '88 or '89. The TA-83CD really reminds me of this AIWA CSD-XL25, also from 1989. I found one of these in decent shape years back at a thrift... it needed tons of caps, but it did end up playing. Maybe this was a common form factor for small boomboxes at the time? I think the AKAI/MITSUBISHI is fancier than this one, as the AIWA has no autoreverse.
It's kind of the beginning of the "egg" models when square was out and oval was in. AIWA went to aiwa around 1992 and there are several similar boomboxes with vertical CD players but it didn't last very long. Even with component stereos, it only lasted a year or two. Diatone is the JDM Branding for higher end Mitsubishi Products, I knew about component tape decks but the boomboxes are new to me and I don't think they shipped them out of Japan. While I don't have either, they do look very similar and I'd bet the AIWA sounds better, they had a ton more experience (along with Sony's Help).
Diatone and Mitsubishi made several really good boomboxes. So did Akai, to a lesser extent. So far, none of these A&D's seem worthy of the name.
I saw a photo with a few shelfs of these more obscure eggs and they look huge, maybe pushing 30"+ wide? I don't have any eggs but I thought they were more mid-sized units. I think the orginal poster was even lamenting that the quality of Mitsubishi Portable Audio at this time was expensive and you could find much better models from other brands.
