This is from HiFi Stereo Review August of 1967, the Norelco L573 is featured. Check out the AIWA Auto Tape Deck below it.
While not a "boombox" without a radio, the AIWA TP-1004 was close and even looks like a more modern boomer with stereo speakers. This is from 1967, anybody have one of these? Edit: It's the December 1967 Issue https://www.americanradiohistory.com/Tape-Recording-UK.htm
It took awhile but I found some pricing for JVC Portables from a 1983 magazine ad for IW-TEN out of Brooklyn New York. The first numbers and letters are from IW-TEN, the last set is the model number but you can see the the JVC RC-M90 had a list price of $549.95 USD, a lot of companies discount 50% to the retailer (with year end sales bonus rebates) so IW-TEN's Price might have been around $275 USD. There was a lot of neat electronics back then including Casio TVs, Calculators and Keyboards. All of the JVC Boomboxes listed are nice, the lower quality ones came shortly after this.
What a great advert, especially as I bought one of the items on it that year; the Casiotone MT65 keyboard. That cost me £150, proving what people in the UK used to say about the dollar-pound. The best investment on the advert would have been the Casio Film Card calculators, although they wouldn't have kept up with inflation. A poo investment would have been the Brother typewriter I sold one in working order for less than £20 last year. Seeing all the Casio products reminded me of this UK company who sold a similar range. No boomboxes though. Finally. If you needed a job to buy all these gadgets how about this from the same magazine ?
Some good information here https://boyet.com/blog/true-credit-card-sized-calculators-ndash-casio-sl-800/ and here http://www.datamath.org/Related/Casio/SL-800.htm In the early 1980s there was a race between Casio and Sharp to make the first true credit card sized calculator and Casio won with the SL800. I didn't know about the magnetic strip though. Unfortunately, as their own instructions show they were rather fragile. The 2mm thick versions were half the price and much more durable.
Reli, I edited the post to include the magazine link, but yep it's a beauty from 67, you have to love this quote: "This was deliberately selected as we feel sure that within the foreseeable future there will be an increasing number of equipments of this kind imported from Japan" How can you not love that! The magazine is old and mostly reel-to-reel but it's fun to look through. Good Stuff on the calculators Longman, I have never run across any of those models before, what's the deal with Pi in the first link, did they both calculate it differently?
I think the author is just showing different fractions close to Pi. 355/133 is much more accurate than 22/7 as the displays show. p.s Thanks for the link. I can see that Sony were advertising Reel to Reel Tape recorders the month I was born. Despite it being a UK magazine I don't remember ever seeing it. Not that surprising as it seemed to cease publication when I was eight.
It looks like the JVC PC-5 Patent https://patents.google.com/patent/USD269177S/en?inventor=Noriteru+Gato
Classic design from 1972, Takerni Ebata designed a lot of the early 70's boomboxes https://patents.google.com/patent/USD224410S/en?inventor=Takemi+Ebata
Another early Panasonic from 1977, you can tell these guys were having fun, this looks like it could have been on Star Blazers. https://patents.google.com/patent/USD224410S/en?inventor=Takemi+Ebata
Yoichi Hisano Design for Panasonic 1977 https://patents.google.com/patent/USD243538S/en?inventor=Yoichi+Hisano
Panasonic issued a lot of design patents, as far as radios, they had a great reputation in the 70's. My experience was mostly limited to the small transistor radios but for a kid they were cheap, looked good and they got in a lot of stations. https://patents.google.com/patent/USD244102S/en?inventor=Kikuo+Ohta
It looks like an early version of Panasonics mega-expensive radio https://patents.google.com/patent/USD234535S/en?inventor=Kazumasa+Takenaka&page=1
Another early Panasonic from 1976, just a little different than the above model https://patents.google.com/patent/USD250190S/en?inventor=Kikuo+Ohta&page=1
