[sdiy] Radfio Shack

[Richard Wentk]

At 16:16 07/10/2004 -0500, TIm Daugard wrote:
>Radio Shack had already drive out all the electronics stores in town. The last
>one closed about two years ago. I suspect the owner was ready to retire 
>and was
>willing to give up on the few customers he got when Radio Shack (if the
>salesperson happened to know he was there) referred people.

When I first visited the US in '77, my three prize captures were a copy of 
the Tomita Planets on vinyl (not available in the UK for contractual 
reasons), an issue of Popular Electronics with a review of the Aries, and a 
Radio Shack catalogue.

Sorry you US types, but this catalogue had our entire party in stitches. It 
was our first real experience of US high pressure hard sell and moronic 
marketing, so of course it was full of blue skies and happy smiling 
Stepford Familes. (And some electronics too, most of which seemed to be 
unfeasibly expensive, and packaged in twos and fives when you'd just want 
the one, and generally annoying in a way you never got from our home-made 
Maplin.)

I remember thinking that I literally could not believe some of the things 
that were in there. One thing I do remember, for some random reason, was 
that they were selling these cheap almost disposable five dollar transistor 
radios. Of course it wasn't enough to try to sell a radio to pick up music, 
or anything straightforward like that. Especially not a radio that 
internally was just like every other cheap radio on the planet. So these 
were colour (sorry, color) coordinated <fanfare...> FlavoRadios! [tm]. In 
an attractive range of hideous pigmented ABS, with matching names like 
Banana and Grape.

I suppose the idea was that someone who wouldn't normally buy a radio would 
see one of these and think 'Mmmm - tasty! I want!' I expect they sold so 
many they made the guy who thought up this scheme a veep or something.

But times change, and everyone is much more demanding and critical and not 
so easily swayed now.

It's lucky you'd never find - say - a serious computer manufacturer going 
in going for a cheap marketing ploy like that today. :-)

Anyway - Rat Shack had huge problems in the UK a couple of years ago and 
closed most of their stores. If they're going the same way in the US, I 
don't think anyone is going to be shedding a tear.

Richard