Vintage Toys & Tech Photos

savetz writes "Here's a fun site: Consumer Reports magazine's vintage photo gallery, in which you can see photos from when the magazine reviewed electric toasters in 1956, in-car record players in 1961, radio sunglasses in 1966, and other good stuff. Don't forget about the flaming Nerf ball."

Comments

Dangerous Toys

[jms]

My favorite is the Mattel Agent Zero M Sonic Blaster 5530. What the picture fails to show is the little boy wetting his pants with excitement and joy when he opened his Christmas Present and saw that monster air bazooka. I know I would have!

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[account_deleted]

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Re:The sunglasses are just AM though...

[squarefish]

AM would be fine for NPR, general news and a lot of sports. But what's the battery life like? rechargable? but I like the secret service like ear piece that comes down- very cool looking- good luck finding a pair!

Real Vintage Toys

[denisonbigred]

If you want to see some truely vintage toys google for "Buddy-L Trucks." My Grandfather developed a collection which my mother no has, that dates back to pre WW2, consisting of Buddy L trucks and old train collections. To put it in perspective, afer his death, my grandmother was offered sever hundred thousand dollars for a chunck of the collection by mulotiple museums.

Old.

[iamdrscience]

I remember seeing those pictures from consumer reports at least 4 years ago. Finally, I've beaten the Slashdot curve!

Re:Ah, the days of innocence.

[CaseyB]

In six months of regular play, we estimate, the cost of batteries will exceed the cost of the toy itself.

That this idea seemed ridiculous at the time is another way the world has changed. I imagine most small battery operated toys have similar economics today.

Don't Buy Crap.

[BigBlockMopar]

I love it. My 1954 Maytag A-504 washing machine. It's been cleaning dirty underwear for 48 years, and all it's ever asked for is a drivebelt.

Carrying on the tradition:

• 1954 Ferrograph tape recorder
• 1967 Maytag dryer
• 1970 Maytag WU-600 dishwasher
• 1970 Ariens snowblower
• 1970 Dodge Dart
• 1974 Plymouth Valiant Brougham
• 1976 Dodge Ram (D-350)
• 1972? Sound A-5000 amplifier
• 1973 Acoustic Research AR-4x speakers
• 1964 Pickett N3T sliderule

The moral?

If you buy good quality stuff once, it will last you your lifetime. And just because something may be old (ie, most of this stuff is older than I am), it doesn't make it irrelevent. What does a new dishwasher do that my old Maytag won't? Nothing. And the old Maytag looks really cool installed in a modern kitchen!

So, when my washing machine's 48-year-old rubber belt finally broke, I went to the local Maytag store and bought a new belt at the parts counter. Spent $10 on the belt, then the manager came running out after me. He rented my washing machine from me - paid me good money, provided me with a new washer while mine was there, and tried to buy it outright - so that he could stick it in the showroom that fall.

Unfortunately, you can only try so long to continue to use your desktop computer...

Re:Don't Buy Crap.

[Megane]

The problem is that most people think computers are a dated item

Most are. Most PC software can still run under the DOS window of 2K/XP, except for those games that don't have any speed control and were responsible for the "TURBO" buttons on a lot of XT and AT class machines. And they have better hardware. Most XT through 486 systems have zero collectible value, and aren't usually worth the trouble to set up, unless they're already running and doing duty as a word processor or something. But they've got no soul.

I know someone who long ago set up a forms generation system for his practice, using Wordstar and its Mailmerge. I'm just as amazed now as I was then that he could make that work. He's gone through about four or five PCs since that original Sanyo 550, and even more printers, and that vintage software still kicks ass for him. But he doesn't go out of his way to run it on a 286.

Most of those old PC clones have no style whatsoever. All of the old 8-bitters they killed off had some kind of interesting design and didn't look like a nondescript beige box. The original TRS-80 design with the computer built into the keyboard unit was brilliant... at least until they needed to add floppy disks. The Commodore PET had that '70s retro-futuristic look, and the VIC-20 and C-64 went with the original TRS-80 look because they figured out how to make an expansion cable bus, even if it was dog slow.

Only Apple has kept the faith by constantly trying to come up with interesting designs. Sure, they've have their share of beige boxes along the way, but even some of those have made a point of looking different, like the Mac II series, and the current "flip-out" cases. And they've had their beige-box stinkers too, like the 8100, where you have to pull out the motherboard (which means all the cards too) to add RAM.

Re:just me?

[coryboehne]

To hell with the nerf products, I need one of these..

Sonic Blaster, 1966

The Mattel Agent Zero M Sonic Blaster 5530 fires compressed air with a deafening blast. Our measurements top out at 157 dB-above a level that can do permanent damage to the hearing of an adult. We rate the toy Not Acceptable.

W00T!

A car for the price of 100 pens!

[Galvatron]

Have a look at this. Down near the bottom, there are two successive entries, the first about a car, the second about pens. The car in the picture is described as the cheapest American-made car, and cost $1000. The line below that, dated a year later states that the price of ballpoint pens just fell from $9 to $1. So, at the earlier price point, for the price of just slightly more than 100 pens, you could have yourself a new car! Today, of course, you can't get a new car for less than $8,000, but you can have yourself 100 Bics for, what, $2? It really is a striking illustration of how inflation is merely an average, prices on individual items increase or decrease at vastly different rates.