National Panasonic Ads

I think you mean Bell & Howell. I suspect that it was just both companies following the same trend. Back in the early 1970s it was felt that having stereo speakers less than a few feet apart would be pointless so boxes were either mono like this or had a detachable speaker or two.

Did you notice that the two units at the back are actually the same one but one in the turntable mode. I don't think the Bell & Howell had a turntable. National Panasonic seemed to love the idea of inlcuding one. How many different boombox turntables did they make over the years ?

 

They were popular in the U.K. too but at the kids / teenagers end of the market Philips and Fidelity were the most popular. Strangely I don't think I have ever seen one from either of those manufacturers with a built in radio, despite both companies making radios. From the number on Ebay.co.uk the Sanyo executive briefcase style sets which could have record deck, cassette. and radio, were reasonably popular but compared to the other two makes they had an executive price tag to match.

 

"Cassette radio" - so it is another term used for a boombox. Is "tape recorder" too boring? Love the look of RX-F4F !

 

I just had another look at this. If you didn't know your dates you would think that was a Personal Stereo bottom right.

@CDV that one is undoutably a minature Tape Recorder or "Cassette Recorder" (to distinguish it from the reel to reel Tape Recorders that were still common back then.
We have discussed before how Boombox is a modern "politically corret" term to describe a Stereo Radio Cassette recorder (which what the manufacturers would have called them, but not Q in James Bond).

Going back to standard "Radio Cassettes" they were often twice the price of a Shoebox style Cassette Recorder (like the one to the Right of the red one in a later advert) so not surprisingly the addition of the radio was a big selling point. Here in the U.K. there was plenty on the radio worth recording. My late Mother bought hers in 1973 so she could record the school radio programmes like "Music and Movement" and use them at a time that suited her class.

 

"Buy some friends"? A woman sleeping with a boombox? As Giles Slade writes, "gradually we came to accept machines as viable alternatives to human company" and "if musical culture began as communicative song deep in our hominin past, in the twentieth century it became a lonely and isolating solace for the modern iMan".