On UK High streets since 1973 Argos is still one of the UKs biggest retailers of durables with over 750 high street shops. What makes them interesting is that they don't display the goods in the shops (which would require much more space than cramming them into a warehouse area at the back of the shop) but publish a catalogue twice a year showing their range. Over the years these catalogues have become a time capsule of what people were buying in any particular year. So if you want to see what were undoubtably the most popular boomboxes sold in the UK in 1986, and how much they cost, just look in that years catalogue. Anyway enough waffle. The Retromash site explains things better, and best of all has a large number of the catalogues available to view online. http://retromash.com/argos/ Scroll down to the bottom to see some 1986 boomboxes without wading through an entire catalogue.
Yeah love the argos catologs, I have a pretty large catalog archive with Argos, Marshall wards, radio shacks etc. I did add them to my drop box for S2G members way back when. I could always add them again if there is interest. Thanks for sharing Longers
We had a similar store in Canada called Consumers Distributing (I believe in the States as well) and they esentially put out the same catalogs. Every kids Christmas wish book.
Found some Consumers Distributing pdf's in this link. Some mags seem to be pared down and only contain the toys, a/v gear. http://www.cdarchive.ca/
I have quite a few as well having bought several of the Catalogue DVDs available on Ebay. Some of them include quite a few American catalogues such as Sears. The "Decade of Argos catalogues" ones are IMHO good value. I have already bought the 70s, 80s and 90s ones. While very interesting, a problem with the likes of Marshall Ward are that their pricing was always geared to the "Just 52 easy weekly payments of £1.99" for an item that would typically cost £75 on the High Street. In contrast Argos prices are normally quite competitive. Thanks for the link. Quite a few interesting things that we didn't get to see in the UK like Citizen boomboxes.
