I ABSOLUTELY LOVED THIS EPISODE!! I would watch these kind of episodes all day. Getting the chance the types of products I've collected and researched, new and advertised, and their original prices is just THRILLING.
Computers in the 80s and early 90s were hella expensive. They really only started getting cheap around 2000 and after. Now we're looking at price creep again.
Back in 1988 Forbes list of top-10 billionaires had a single US billionaire - Sam Walton of Walmart, at 7th place with $6.5 billion. Half the list were Japanese, including top two - Yoshiaki Tsutsumi of Seibu Railway Company, Ltd (1st, $18.9 billion) and Taikichiro Mori of Mori Building Company, Limited (2nd, $18.9 billion). Today, all but TWO are US billionaires, poorest being Larry Page of Google with a beggarly $114 billion, while globally there are 2781 billionaires with total net wealth of $14.2 trillion. They made two trillion since last year. THAT'S WHY EVERYTHING GOT SO EXPENSIVE LATELY! But hey! There's more billionaires and they are richer! Aren't you glad you contributed? Remember! Be a good consumer and one day... you'll have nothing. Come on! Shop-shop! The spice must flow! Upward, naturally.
Realistic is Radio Shacks exclusive name along with Optimus. It's all made by various companies for Radio Shack specifically. I collect Realistic stuff now because it's actually really unique in this day and age, and some of it is actually very good quality!
I own an Optimus keyboard, and what I've always found interesting about it is that it's essentially the exact same as several Casios that I've seen, down to the sound chip and LCD screen. Definitely a fun example of badge engineering in electronics
Realistic had good stuff. Often times they would contract out several well known Japanese manufacturers for their hifi equipment. Edit 1:Koss actually was their biggest vendor when it came to headphones specifically, I recall RS had rebadged 4AA's and 4AAA's Edit 2: That shure knockoff was an actual shure. I've got several and they have sm58/pg48 parts inside.
The spring-terminal lab kits at 6:24 were fun (assuming you were a sufficiently nerdy kid), I got the big wood-framed one for Christmas in like '84 and have been doing electronics ever since. It was in between a toy and a real prototyping breadboard, came with a big book full of real schematics next to the point to point wiring diagrams, not dumbed-down at all.
I had one back around '00, it was a lot of fun. I accidentally burned out an LED though because I connected it to battery voltage. There were also those snap-together circuit kits.
Oh yeah. I remember going on a field trip in .. I dunno, 4th grade(?), to the museum, and they had one of those kits in the gift shop. That was it for me. Only thing in there I cared about. LEDs, a speaker, some resistors, wire, and a bunch of spring terminals? Sounds like a weekend to me! Let's go!
3:51 my dad used one of those mono earphones up until like 2021 lol. He used it to listen to the news on his clock radio in the morning so he wouldn't wake up my mom lol.
6:27 that one is still available, or at least was until 10 years ago. However, it is a crystal radio, it is powered purely by the radio waves received without an antenna. And for that you need a pretty strong AM medium wave transmitter nearby. If you don't have one, they won't work. You can also fairly easily build thing yourself, it's literally a crystal earphone, a capacitor, a coil with ferrite core you can move, a diode and a resistor. And then 10 to 20m of antenna wire. But receiving the radio stations without any battery is still magic to me. The AM + VHF kit on the other page will still work, though the VHF FM reception is only barely passable. Still fun, though!
I gotta say, the MP3 to cassette adapters are still basically just magic to me. I don't understand how they could possibly work and yet they're so perfect.
I still use those kid’s electronics kits to this day when prototyping with Arduino or Raspberry Pi. Rather than pulling out bins of parts and adapting them to work with breadboards it’s just easier to run a wire over to the component I need in the kit and use that, especially in the proof-of-concept stage. I’ll pick them up at the Goodwill Outlet store for $1.89/lb. and they save me a bundle of time.
My Father brought me once a used 286 Computer from his school that also had one of these "double height" harddisks with i think 40 MB. Probably cost the equivalent of a kidney when new.
5:00 at the top. Me and my dad had that (near enough) exact design in the house during around 2005 or smth....if i felt like being a shitter you could slide the talk button to the side after pressing and it would lock into place. Ahh memories of just making noises into it till i was 100% sure he had turned it off.
The Prices for some things in the catalog (Radio Shack in the US) seem really high. Was the exchange rate in 1988-'89 roughly 1.5 US dollars to 1 Australian dollar, something like that?
The Dollar was floated in 83 and the Aussie took a nosedive. All electronics were expensive here because of exchange rates and import duties. Everyone I knew bought their VHS on a holiday to Hong Kong and for sure it had a photocopy of the English instructions included.
it's crazy how much cheaper things have gotten. adjusted for inflation a lot of that stuff is ridiculously expensive. but then again cost of living was much less back then so it really does even out. I remember seeing prices like that back then and not thinking they were that much, but if I adjust for inflation the prices seem absurd. Yet everyone had stuff like that back then and no one was complaining about the prices. For example, a catalog with something that costs over 10k? this is unheard of nowadays because the price just seems absurd, but back then it wasn't regarded as that absurd to have something for 5k
I had that exact joystick pictured on the right at 5:58 when I was a kid. It was exactly as crappy as you would expect! 😂 Yep, just dug it out of a storage box. The buttons are mushy, the stick feels really imprecise, the plastic squeaks, and the whole thing weighs nothing! I’m tempted to take it apart and see what little might be inside. Edit to add: At 7:05, I had that exact alarm clock labeled as (3)!
All of Radio Shack's (Tandy Electronics) keyboards were rebranded Casio models. And I still have the watch labeled #7 in the in the catalog. It was their cheapest model and mine still works today.
Oooohhhhh waaaaauuww! The Tandy folder was always one i was looking out for! IN the Netherlands we had a Tandy in the street and it was the one place where i always could be found. Buying kits and i bought mane "realistic" EQ and little amplifiers. I also had that boxed style tv for my comodore 64 and Amiga 500. I bought a lot of the stuff in that folder to be honest ;-) Very nice memories on those days.
I was just reading about those a couple months ago, and I can't say I completely understand how they work. If I remember correctly, it had something to do with time (path length) alignment, which is why they point down instead of out. Fascinating stuff that apparently made a big difference at the time, but is no longer necessary with modern design improvements. I was prepared to find out it was 100% there just to look cool, but it turns out that was just a side benefit.
It's amazing to see how far we've come in terms of technology. In 1988, a 20 megabyte external hard drive was $1500, and I got a 4 terabyte drive last year for less than $100.
Aaah Tandy brand blank cassettes! You knew someone was a cheap skate when they gave you one of those. I think most ended up flying in the wind around stop signs at intersections.
Back in the day, when we used cassettes for data storage, you actually wanted to use the cheapest tapes possible. Better tapes reduced the hiss and that would make the data recordings less reliable.
Realistic headphones weren't knock offs, they were (even into the 2000's) actually Koss manufactured. Not all models mind you, but if it looked like a Koss, it was. RS did the packaging, logistics, and warranty. Also, a fair bit of the (not low end) stereo equipment was rebadged Pioneer. Some of the last Optimus brand home theatre equipment was rebadged Pioneer Elite gear. Same with car audio. At least mid-late 90s through early 2000s, a number of the head units and amps were all Pioneer. Dirro the mics. They were nsotly Shure units.
Yep. And some of the small metal bookshelf speakers were, I believe made by RCA, and if I recall correctly they started selling them under the RCA brand later when they started carrying other brands.
$5000 for a PC seems like a lot now, but a 386 was god-tier back in 1988. Like I bought my first PC compatible in 1990 and that was still a 8086 (actually it was a compatible chip made by NEC, but still). Even though the 386 was released by Intel in 1985, they weren't the CPU most people got until 1992-3. So to have one in 1988 would have been like having a top of the range AMD Threadripper now.
My (dad's) first computer was a 386 with 58 GHz and an SVGA card. That was around 1989 or 1990. When I got to high school in 1993, it was still unusual to have SVGA. Of course, pretty soon it was outstripped, and in fact I think 1993 was the last time I had a computer that actually impressed my peers!
as a reel to reel user, it's both as expensive and less expensive than you'd think, I got both my tape machines for 200 and 500 respectively, a mastering and a multitrack, not terrible but the price of the tape is like eating an entire bushel of rotten apples one by one
Oh man, I can't believe what I've just seen. I had that Toy, the 200-in-1 electric project lab. My mum got that for a birthday present, I loved that thing, seeing it brought back such good memories. It sadly fells to the ways of corrosion many years later but damn, what a toy. 🥲 Thanks for the nostalgia
Yup, I recall reading praise for one of the Optimus bookshelf models in the HiFi forums of the late 90s. I remember thinking, "Optimus? Like.... Radio Shack? ... really? huh." I LOVED their raw speaker driver selection back when I was kid. I would thumb through the catalog and imagine building my own speakers from the coolest looking (usually, weirdest or most unique) drivers. Crossover? Bah. Just wire the horn and the mid-woof (with whizzer cone!) in parallel. Grab the jigsaw, cut a hole in a piece of scrap wood, screw 'em in, and hook it up! She'll be right! haha
most of their drives were OEM'd by JBL and the like , they were always a good source for drivers in guitar amps and PA systems in a pinch ( they always seemed to stock them in store) the crossovers were really good quality for the price
I still daily-drive a set of 1976 Realistic Mach One 4074's (Circa 1977). They could probably use the crossovers rebuilt but they sound fantastic paired with a modern Yamaha amp. Very nice cabinet build quality they really add to my livingroom. I've had them for about a decade, quite happy with them.
I love Radio Shack/Tandy catalogues! You're not going to find other "brands" per-se back in the day at radio shack, but a lot of the audio stuff was OEM'd by the big brand such as Koss, Technics, Pioneer.
Those weren't knockoffs of Koss, they were made by Koss for Radio Shack. My favorite lightweight headphones in the late 90s or early 2000s were made by Koss - Optimus Pro 25. The later Pro 35A was identical to the Koss version and even had Koss printed on the inside of them.
As a kid in those days, retail prices in Australia were always hyper inflated when it comes to electronics. There was no such thing as a 'cheap' brand from the cost perspective. Probably contributed to why many of these retailers went out of business when online shopping started as people could actually see that by global pricing, they were being ripped off - Also why Gerry Harvey hates the internet.
1:06 Not vents, wave guides that act as a physical filter for the high end. 1:51 I used at least 3 of those drivers to make speakers. 2:19 My first "real" tape deck was a Realistic. 3:10 I owned a company that used empty cassette shells to load blank tape into. We bought in bulk, however. 3:52 Those were for portable radios and cassette decks, or at least that's how I used them. 5:13 Had one. 7:09 My roommate had the calculator watch. 7:31 Used one for printing cassette labels. Learning the formatting was a bitch. I miss Radio Shack.
I used to go into my local Tandy store all the time in the early-mid 2000's. Super hot chick worked there, only reason I went in there. Ended up dating her like 10 years later haha
I had no idea you guys had Radio Shack down there!! Thought it was a USA only thing. Love that there's nostalgia worldwide for the same stuff I lusted after!
I used to love reading through the ComputerShopper catalogues (magazines?) in the US as a kid. They were like phone book-sized tomes full of all kinds of stuff... that I could never afford. Used to really want a Palmtop -- those little Windows CE 4 things that were killed off by PDAs.
I spent many summer nights in the early-mid 90s thumbing through those over and over into the early morning hours. I had a few choice vendors I would call up every now and then, and ask for price updates. As if the difference mattered to an early teen with no income ...
@@darkraven-666 There's some new reproduction tape this is being made on ebay however by Capture 390 i've managed to pick some up on a 7inch for 40 pounds/dollars which is based off or exact simular to AMPEX 457 tape. And its actually really good tape.
Identical to the Tandy catalogues they had in the doorway of every store here in the UK. Why did they sell those Realistic speakers singularly?! Drove me nuts. Of course you are gonna want a pair.
I loved old Tandy catalogues. I don't think Tandy sold other mainstream electronic brand products until around 1993 or so, so all the products in this catalogue are house branded, though I understand a lot of them were made by well known manufacturers such as Pioneer and Sony. Their electronic keyboards were made by Casio.
1:00 I mean sure, but I have two pair of Realistic speakers in my house and I love them. Plus a realistic tape deck in the main hi fi. So although cheap, it’s not low quality. I compare them to HH Scott (love my pair of Scotts) and some lower end Technics stuff.
Tandy corp, the catalogue your looking through, owned Radio shack here in the states, and in turn owned Realistic hence why that's almost all you saw. that was their private label
Tech seemed so much more interesting and had more character in them back then and today most tech is as hollow and soulless as a plastic bucket/iphone. Also back in them days when buying hard drives they used to have a label on them with faulty sectors written on it because the manufacturing process was so unperfected you would buy a new hdd with un useable sectors 😀
Realistic WAS Tandy/Radio shacks brand and was really what they carried back in the day, there was not much for other brands in their stores. Realistic made some good quality stuff ( well whatever Japanese OEM provider they used did) and at reasonable prices, I used to love radio shack for grabbing quick parts for a repair or build I was doing back then , too bad they went the way of the dodo
I agree, they had a more square and robust design, emphasizing function and conveying a professional and modern image. Unlike today's products that look more like expensive toys.
In the 80s and part of the 90s RS only carried the radioshack branded prouducts (for the most part, but if you took them apart you would often get the real manufacturers name inside. The mics were mostly made by shure and a decent number of the receivers were pioneer or technics. Worked there during the heyday and into the massive decline.
@@pineapplesideways3820 Tandy was the name used for Radio Shack in almost all English speaking countries outside the US and Canada. In the UK it was Tandy not Radio Shack as well.
![Noob To Max With DRAGON REWORK In Blox Fruits [FULL MOVIE]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/LnBMOinoOvA/mqdefault.jpg)
how he missed the iconic "Telephone Cord untangler" at 5:27 is beyond me
Oh, definitely. I was absolutely expecting that to be addressed. Shocked that it wasn't. LOL
I ABSOLUTELY LOVED THIS EPISODE!! I would watch these kind of episodes all day. Getting the chance the types of products I've collected and researched, new and advertised, and their original prices is just THRILLING.
Computers in the 80s and early 90s were hella expensive. They really only started getting cheap around 2000 and after. Now we're looking at price creep again.
Yeah but that's more due to our currency being worthless due to decades of debt spending coming home to roost.
Only difference is why they're expensive again.
1980s: they were expensive to produce
2020s: corporate greed
Back in 1988 Forbes list of top-10 billionaires had a single US billionaire - Sam Walton of Walmart, at 7th place with $6.5 billion. Half the list were Japanese, including top two - Yoshiaki Tsutsumi of Seibu Railway Company, Ltd (1st, $18.9 billion) and Taikichiro Mori of Mori Building Company, Limited (2nd, $18.9 billion).
Today, all but TWO are US billionaires, poorest being Larry Page of Google with a beggarly $114 billion, while globally there are 2781 billionaires with total net wealth of $14.2 trillion.
They made two trillion since last year. THAT'S WHY EVERYTHING GOT SO EXPENSIVE LATELY! But hey! There's more billionaires and they are richer! Aren't you glad you contributed?
Remember! Be a good consumer and one day... you'll have nothing.
Come on! Shop-shop! The spice must flow! Upward, naturally.
Here's to a year of "high quality" music product reviews
Well the reviews were high quality😅
*Highest
Nugget phones are the gold standard of hi-fi audio, after all
Realistic is Radio Shacks exclusive name along with Optimus. It's all made by various companies for Radio Shack specifically. I collect Realistic stuff now because it's actually really unique in this day and age, and some of it is actually very good quality!
Tandy was Australia's radio shack
As I recall, my old top-of-the-line (PRO-60? I don’t remember) Realistic headphones still had the Koss name embossed in the plastic.
it was Tandy in the UK to@@pineapplesideways3820
I own an Optimus keyboard, and what I've always found interesting about it is that it's essentially the exact same as several Casios that I've seen, down to the sound chip and LCD screen. Definitely a fun example of badge engineering in electronics
Realistic had good stuff. Often times they would contract out several well known Japanese manufacturers for their hifi equipment.
Edit 1:Koss actually was their biggest vendor when it came to headphones specifically, I recall RS had rebadged 4AA's and 4AAA's
Edit 2: That shure knockoff was an actual shure. I've got several and they have sm58/pg48 parts inside.
Realistic keyboards were pretty much all re-badged Casios.
PC and Apple Computer cost in the 80's was why my friends and I had Atari and Commodore computers back then.
What a whimsical and robust adventure through such a wide selection of the best products
The spring-terminal lab kits at 6:24 were fun (assuming you were a sufficiently nerdy kid), I got the big wood-framed one for Christmas in like '84 and have been doing electronics ever since. It was in between a toy and a real prototyping breadboard, came with a big book full of real schematics next to the point to point wiring diagrams, not dumbed-down at all.
I had one back around '00, it was a lot of fun.
I accidentally burned out an LED though because I connected it to battery voltage.
There were also those snap-together circuit kits.
I had one that came with a 555 timer, they are indeed fun
Oh yeah. I remember going on a field trip in .. I dunno, 4th grade(?), to the museum, and they had one of those kits in the gift shop. That was it for me. Only thing in there I cared about. LEDs, a speaker, some resistors, wire, and a bunch of spring terminals? Sounds like a weekend to me! Let's go!
I actually built the AM/FM radio kit that was slightly out of shot back in the mid 90s. Looked exactly the same and it actually worked.
3:51 my dad used one of those mono earphones up until like 2021 lol. He used it to listen to the news on his clock radio in the morning so he wouldn't wake up my mom lol.
I have always hated using anything that only worked in one ear. It just feels so imbalanced, like trying to walk around with one eye closed.
Ending my crappy 2023 strong and starting my 2024 on a great note by watching a new video from my favorite RUclipsr! Thanks DankPods!!
nice pfp my dude
6:27 that one is still available, or at least was until 10 years ago. However, it is a crystal radio, it is powered purely by the radio waves received without an antenna. And for that you need a pretty strong AM medium wave transmitter nearby. If you don't have one, they won't work. You can also fairly easily build thing yourself, it's literally a crystal earphone, a capacitor, a coil with ferrite core you can move, a diode and a resistor. And then 10 to 20m of antenna wire. But receiving the radio stations without any battery is still magic to me.
The AM + VHF kit on the other page will still work, though the VHF FM reception is only barely passable. Still fun, though!
I gotta say, the MP3 to cassette adapters are still basically just magic to me. I don't understand how they could possibly work and yet they're so perfect.
At that point, they only carried their own brands. They didn't start carrying other brands until they were failing.
I still use those kid’s electronics kits to this day when prototyping with Arduino or Raspberry Pi. Rather than pulling out bins of parts and adapting them to work with breadboards it’s just easier to run a wire over to the component I need in the kit and use that, especially in the proof-of-concept stage. I’ll pick them up at the Goodwill Outlet store for $1.89/lb. and they save me a bundle of time.
2:23 Not sure if its an official term but I have heard some people refer to the late 80s/ early 90s design style as "Organic".
Adjusted for inflation, the "laptop" at 7:34 would be about 7,500.00 dollars today. My HP cost only 450 last year.
My Father brought me once a used 286 Computer from his school that also had one of these "double height" harddisks with i think 40 MB. Probably cost the equivalent of a kidney when new.
5:00 at the top. Me and my dad had that (near enough) exact design in the house during around 2005 or smth....if i felt like being a shitter you could slide the talk button to the side after pressing and it would lock into place. Ahh memories of just making noises into it till i was 100% sure he had turned it off.
Honestly I could just sit here watching someone livesteam old catalogues and chatting about it in the comments for hours
The Prices for some things in the catalog (Radio Shack in the US) seem really high. Was the exchange rate in 1988-'89 roughly 1.5 US dollars to 1 Australian dollar, something like that?
The Dollar was floated in 83 and the Aussie took a nosedive. All electronics were expensive here because of exchange rates and import duties. Everyone I knew bought their VHS on a holiday to Hong Kong and for sure it had a photocopy of the English instructions included.
Absolutely correct, people even bought colour TVs in Honkers or Singapore. @@paulaus
it's crazy how much cheaper things have gotten. adjusted for inflation a lot of that stuff is ridiculously expensive. but then again cost of living was much less back then so it really does even out. I remember seeing prices like that back then and not thinking they were that much, but if I adjust for inflation the prices seem absurd. Yet everyone had stuff like that back then and no one was complaining about the prices. For example, a catalog with something that costs over 10k? this is unheard of nowadays because the price just seems absurd, but back then it wasn't regarded as that absurd to have something for 5k
I think for it to even out, someone back then would have been spending something like 60% of their earnings on this sort of gear!
I had that exact joystick pictured on the right at 5:58 when I was a kid. It was exactly as crappy as you would expect! 😂 Yep, just dug it out of a storage box. The buttons are mushy, the stick feels really imprecise, the plastic squeaks, and the whole thing weighs nothing! I’m tempted to take it apart and see what little might be inside.
Edit to add: At 7:05, I had that exact alarm clock labeled as (3)!
I am deeply amused to find the headphones I am currently wearing in this catalogue, specifically the one on the right at 3:19
All of Radio Shack's (Tandy Electronics) keyboards were rebranded Casio models.
And I still have the watch labeled #7 in the in the catalog. It was their cheapest model and mine still works today.
Casio watches will outlive humanity.
I'm the very early 1980s they sold a rebranded Moog. I think it was the "Rogue", a very good analogue monosynth.
Yeah great find. I worked at Tandy's in the 1980s. Great times.
OOH GAWD THEY'RE COMIN, THE AFTER SHOWS ARE COMIN'
Oooohhhhh waaaaauuww! The Tandy folder was always one i was looking out for! IN the Netherlands we had a Tandy in the street and it was the one place where i always could be found. Buying kits and i bought mane "realistic" EQ and little amplifiers. I also had that boxed style tv for my comodore 64 and Amiga 500. I bought a lot of the stuff in that folder to be honest ;-) Very nice memories on those days.
Those "vents" are a JBL invention called the Acoustic Lens. Very sought after technology for high end speakers in the 80s
I was just reading about those a couple months ago, and I can't say I completely understand how they work. If I remember correctly, it had something to do with time (path length) alignment, which is why they point down instead of out. Fascinating stuff that apparently made a big difference at the time, but is no longer necessary with modern design improvements. I was prepared to find out it was 100% there just to look cool, but it turns out that was just a side benefit.
Ah man please make more videos of you going through old catalogs. I can not express how much joy they bring me.
TV antennas still work it's basically the same technology but now digital and every TV past 2008 has a digital tuner so it can just be plugged in.
5:00 OK, those same wireless intercoms in the 1988 Radio Shack catalog were $69.95 US/pair. Import tax of some kind going on here, LOL?
Tandy is radioahack for Australia
Yep, import taxes and exchange value.
4:56 I have one of those intercoms in the catalogue, works very well like, what, 45 years later? 9/10
It's amazing to see how far we've come in terms of technology. In 1988, a 20 megabyte external hard drive was $1500, and I got a 4 terabyte drive last year for less than $100.
Koss actually made a lot of Radio Shacks headphones
1500 for 20 Mb external storage really put it in perspective. We've come a really, REALLY long way
Noticed that hard drive prices seem to be slightly up in the last ~5 years.
Tandy WAS Radio Shack; so naturally their catalogue would only feature their products and not other brands.
Aaah Tandy brand blank cassettes! You knew someone was a cheap skate when they gave you one of those. I think most ended up flying in the wind around stop signs at intersections.
Back in the day, when we used cassettes for data storage, you actually wanted to use the cheapest tapes possible. Better tapes reduced the hiss and that would make the data recordings less reliable.
what about the cheap Acme brand cassettes from woolies? 📼
Realistic headphones weren't knock offs, they were (even into the 2000's) actually Koss manufactured. Not all models mind you, but if it looked like a Koss, it was. RS did the packaging, logistics, and warranty.
Also, a fair bit of the (not low end) stereo equipment was rebadged Pioneer. Some of the last Optimus brand home theatre equipment was rebadged Pioneer Elite gear.
Same with car audio. At least mid-late 90s through early 2000s, a number of the head units and amps were all Pioneer.
Dirro the mics. They were nsotly Shure units.
Yep. And some of the small metal bookshelf speakers were, I believe made by RCA, and if I recall correctly they started selling them under the RCA brand later when they started carrying other brands.
I had that keyboard with sound sticks. Got it for Christmas that year. I played the hell out of it
The cheap RC toys was neat to see especially since the price on these new today is under 20$
That external hard drive nearly killed me.
$5000 for a PC seems like a lot now, but a 386 was god-tier back in 1988. Like I bought my first PC compatible in 1990 and that was still a 8086 (actually it was a compatible chip made by NEC, but still). Even though the 386 was released by Intel in 1985, they weren't the CPU most people got until 1992-3. So to have one in 1988 would have been like having a top of the range AMD Threadripper now.
My (dad's) first computer was a 386 with 58 GHz and an SVGA card. That was around 1989 or 1990. When I got to high school in 1993, it was still unusual to have SVGA. Of course, pretty soon it was outstripped, and in fact I think 1993 was the last time I had a computer that actually impressed my peers!
@@saltech3444I think you meant MHz?
@@pvshka And like 8MHz.
Realistic was the house brand for Radio Shack a division of the Tandy Leather Corporation.
The 80s was the peak for tech and style. Kids now are just jealous.
I had one of the 200-in-1 electronics kits in like 1993!
as a reel to reel user, it's both as expensive and less expensive than you'd think, I got both my tape machines for 200 and 500 respectively, a mastering and a multitrack, not terrible but the price of the tape is like eating an entire bushel of rotten apples one by one
Oh man, I can't believe what I've just seen. I had that Toy, the 200-in-1 electric project lab. My mum got that for a birthday present, I loved that thing, seeing it brought back such good memories. It sadly fells to the ways of corrosion many years later but damn, what a toy. 🥲 Thanks for the nostalgia
This is definitely one of the most entertaining videos I have watched in awhile
Even after adjusting for inflation, Tandy are still cheaper than Apple when spec'ing-up memory!💸🤣 8:05
Realistic speakers were actually quite nice - I remember them being pretty well regarded in various hifi magazines.
Yup, I recall reading praise for one of the Optimus bookshelf models in the HiFi forums of the late 90s. I remember thinking, "Optimus? Like.... Radio Shack? ... really? huh."
I LOVED their raw speaker driver selection back when I was kid. I would thumb through the catalog and imagine building my own speakers from the coolest looking (usually, weirdest or most unique) drivers. Crossover? Bah. Just wire the horn and the mid-woof (with whizzer cone!) in parallel. Grab the jigsaw, cut a hole in a piece of scrap wood, screw 'em in, and hook it up! She'll be right! haha
most of their drives were OEM'd by JBL and the like , they were always a good source for drivers in guitar amps and PA systems in a pinch ( they always seemed to stock them in store) the crossovers were really good quality for the price
I still daily-drive a set of 1976 Realistic Mach One 4074's (Circa 1977). They could probably use the crossovers rebuilt but they sound fantastic paired with a modern Yamaha amp. Very nice cabinet build quality they really add to my livingroom. I've had them for about a decade, quite happy with them.
I've not seen the Nova 40 and 55 models for ages, except now. They've been on my headphone bucket list since i was a kid.
I love Radio Shack/Tandy catalogues! You're not going to find other "brands" per-se back in the day at radio shack, but a lot of the audio stuff was OEM'd by the big brand such as Koss, Technics, Pioneer.
Those weren't knockoffs of Koss, they were made by Koss for Radio Shack. My favorite lightweight headphones in the late 90s or early 2000s were made by Koss - Optimus Pro 25. The later Pro 35A was identical to the Koss version and even had Koss printed on the inside of them.
As a kid in those days, retail prices in Australia were always hyper inflated when it comes to electronics. There was no such thing as a 'cheap' brand from the cost perspective. Probably contributed to why many of these retailers went out of business when online shopping started as people could actually see that by global pricing, they were being ripped off - Also why Gerry Harvey hates the internet.
I remember harvey norman selling a big flat TV (~150cm widescreen I think) priced ~$40k in 2000.
You sure are a specimen my dude. Nothing like this channel on RUclips for sure 😂
We had a lot of vintage speakers when I was growing up but I never found another pair that had glass tweeters on the top..
as someone born in 1986, i totally relate to all this badass gear
6:40 That electronic chess set was the equivalent of $849 today. 😂
1:06 Not vents, wave guides that act as a physical filter for the high end.
1:51 I used at least 3 of those drivers to make speakers.
2:19 My first "real" tape deck was a Realistic.
3:10 I owned a company that used empty cassette shells to load blank tape into. We bought in bulk, however.
3:52 Those were for portable radios and cassette decks, or at least that's how I used them.
5:13 Had one.
7:09 My roommate had the calculator watch.
7:31 Used one for printing cassette labels. Learning the formatting was a bitch.
I miss Radio Shack.
Dank reading old catalogues is my absolute favourite spin off series
I used to go into my local Tandy store all the time in the early-mid 2000's. Super hot chick worked there, only reason I went in there. Ended up dating her like 10 years later haha
I had no idea you guys had Radio Shack down there!! Thought it was a USA only thing. Love that there's nostalgia worldwide for the same stuff I lusted after!
We had Tandy shops in the UK too, just like the ones in Oz.
I used to love reading through the ComputerShopper catalogues (magazines?) in the US as a kid. They were like phone book-sized tomes full of all kinds of stuff... that I could never afford. Used to really want a Palmtop -- those little Windows CE 4 things that were killed off by PDAs.
I spent many summer nights in the early-mid 90s thumbing through those over and over into the early morning hours. I had a few choice vendors I would call up every now and then, and ask for price updates. As if the difference mattered to an early teen with no income ...
My Dad was famous for pick up speaker boxes off the side of the road and fixing them up and reselling them
7:34 I assume no laptop today has a keyboard that good.
I had that build your own radio kit! It worked alright, but i was in the woods in the middle of nowhere so......didnt get many stations.
As a audiophile that has an akai 1800sd reel to reel with it's 15ips adapter i'd wish to get reel to reel tape brand new for £15 these days
same with my HS revox A77. Best i can find are old used tapes for cheap :(
@@darkraven-666 There's some new reproduction tape this is being made on ebay however by Capture 390 i've managed to pick some up on a 7inch for 40 pounds/dollars which is based off or exact simular to AMPEX 457 tape. And its actually really good tape.
6:21 I had that exact 200 in 1! Did all of 2 of those projects although I think the second one was a crystal radio set which I used for a while.
Identical to the Tandy catalogues they had in the doorway of every store here in the UK. Why did they sell those Realistic speakers singularly?! Drove me nuts. Of course you are gonna want a pair.
Tandy Leather still exists here in the USA. Wild to think that a leather company also owned one of the most iconic electronics stores.
Another company also started out making leather goods then branched out into electronics. The COnnecticut LEather COmpany (Coleco) also did.
2:25 my grandma still listens to radio out of one of these 😁
Holy 80s….🤣🤣🤣 Nothing like ol’ Dank to brighten your day. Happy 2024!!
I loved old Tandy catalogues. I don't think Tandy sold other mainstream electronic brand products until around 1993 or so, so all the products in this catalogue are house branded, though I understand a lot of them were made by well known manufacturers such as Pioneer and Sony. Their electronic keyboards were made by Casio.
@6:23 I had that exact eclectric lab kit in the upper right when I was a kid.
1:00 I mean sure, but I have two pair of Realistic speakers in my house and I love them. Plus a realistic tape deck in the main hi fi. So although cheap, it’s not low quality. I compare them to HH Scott (love my pair of Scotts) and some lower end Technics stuff.
7:45 THAT WAS MY FIRST COMPUTER! 1000 HX!
Gimme a whole video of Wade just doing a North American white dude accent! 😂
Here after he actually got a cashies boombox and it immediately ate his precious music casette.
These were Radio Shack catalogs in the US, did Australia not have Radio Shack? I always loved looking through them, whatever you call em!
I think it was known locally as "Tandy"
Called Tandy in the rest of the world.
5:33 I want it as my voicemail
Tandy corp, the catalogue your looking through, owned Radio shack here in the states, and in turn owned Realistic hence why that's almost all you saw. that was their private label
I had that exact lab kit. So much fun
Tech seemed so much more interesting and had more character in them back then and today most tech is as hollow and soulless as a plastic bucket/iphone. Also back in them days when buying hard drives they used to have a label on them with faulty sectors written on it because the manufacturing process was so unperfected you would buy a new hdd with un useable sectors 😀
Beautiful.
God as someone who’s half deaf from birth that flashing light call light would be spectacular nowadays 😭
Realistic WAS Tandy/Radio shacks brand and was really what they carried back in the day, there was not much for other brands in their stores. Realistic made some good quality stuff ( well whatever Japanese OEM provider they used did) and at reasonable prices, I used to love radio shack for grabbing quick parts for a repair or build I was doing back then , too bad they went the way of the dodo
I still use that amp & mach 2 speakers every week!
80s electronic design was just so cool looking
I agree, they had a more square and robust design, emphasizing function and conveying a professional and modern image. Unlike today's products that look more like expensive toys.
But during the 90s all 80s stuff looked so bad!! I guess things come around.
2:57 FYI they still make VHS cleaning solvents to this day. ;)
We had a Tandy growing up. I had no idea my grandpa paid 5k for it.
4:41 time to search for a mickey nugget mp3? ;)
I feel like the man in the thumbnail wants to make small talk while he’s working the carving station at a golden corral.
Hah I've had 2 of those cassette decks in my cars, neither worked. I serviced a truck a few months back that had one, also didn't work!
Yoooo I found one of those chess boards at a yard sale maybe 12-14 years ago for $10 😂
In the 80s and part of the 90s RS only carried the radioshack branded prouducts (for the most part, but if you took them apart you would often get the real manufacturers name inside. The mics were mostly made by shure and a decent number of the receivers were pioneer or technics. Worked there during the heyday and into the massive decline.
Tandy was Australia's radio shack
@@pineapplesideways3820 Tandy was the name used for Radio Shack in almost all English speaking countries outside the US and Canada. In the UK it was Tandy not Radio Shack as well.
@@kevinh96 thankyou for your insight
"Intercoms: They're like walkie-talkies for grown-ups"
I had that chess board! It was awful, but there's no way it cost us that much to get. Parents prob got it in the 90s.
The later Realistic Highball in fact were manufactured by Shure. I have an entire collection of Radio Shack/Realistic microphones.
I have one of those realistic mixers somewhere, no idea it was that old