I recently went back through the Argos catalogs (check out the Crown CSC on page 184! 119 pounds in 1982 is $560 now! https://issuu.com/retromash/docs/argos-no17-1982-springsummer). I'm looking for an ad for the Discolite. It is such an iconic box, even though not a favorite of some, but I have never seen an ad. Same for some of the other boxes, like the Lasonics. Does anyone know of any adverts?
I think the Discolite's, Lasonics and Helix's were sold in package deals that anyone could buy. I remember them in two places, big city small electronic shops, in the front windows looking huge, and at the local flea market, new in the box, I never saw them at the department stores or the big electronics shops. I get on google books, here's a link to Popular Science, and put in "Lasonic" in the search engine, also hit all issues. https://books.google.com/books/about/Popular_Science.html?id=MC0DAAAAMBAJ You might have better luck with some of the other magazines, Billboard is a great one, especially for the financial side but there's some other music related as well. The flying and skiing magazines are also good for searching. Another great site is https://www.americanradiohistory.com/ There's a ton of magazines, you'll have to do a lot of searching to find anything. Also search the old forum through the forum reader, search through google and not the search box. I try to post new and exciting things but sometimes I get surprised and find someone posted the same thing years ago.
I love looking through old catalogues and Retromash has a great selection. It looks as if boxes weren't that much cheaper in the USA. This is from the 1983 Sears catalogue. Electronics certainly wasn't cheap back then, although the equipment tended to be better quality. Thinking back I am still amazed that the people I bought my first house from in 1986 had a £600 Panasonic VCR in their £24000 house ! The same houses now go for about £200000 while the VCR would be £10 in a Charity Shop. In the UK Argos is such a big retailer (which is still going) that any manufacturer getting a piece of their equipment in the catalogue would have been ringing up the factory telling them to increase production. Somehow I doubt if any boombox that had appeared in their catalogue would be hard to find on Ebay.co.uk. In contrast if any Discolite's, Lasonics and Helix's were ever sold in the UK, they would have been from a small number of specialist electronic stores in one area of London (Edgware Road).
I was wondering about this as well; maybe due to the poorer sound quality some of the larger boxes were not listed for serious audiophiles. The discos were patented in 1989, so could that also be why they rarely show up since boomboxes were on the way out (from a retailers perspective in terms of limited add space) by then? These are great suggestions, thank you!
Here's some Discolite Information fromthe other side of the globe. http://videohit.mobi/results/0000/discolite+boombox/ And a photo of the data plate, It's not really market specific, it could be used just about anywhere. We used to get catalogs at work from Hong Kong and Taiwan Manufacturers for electronic products, they would even sell you name plates and boxes for a little more money just as long as you bought a pile of them. I have a feeling these were part of that group.
