What do you think of Radio Shack?
Were they important to you as a kid?
I never got into the whole R/C scene and I'm unsure I even thought of remote-control stuff as toys. They felt like something else. Like rocketry did. I wish I had delved into both of them.
Tandy is another name I associate with remote-controlling and they might even have had shops. Tandy shops. Is that right?
Anyways here's a strange but comical film of a Radio Shack Space Walker, in New York which is not something I've seen in the flesh. Have you?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZzzdUN24jY
Tandy did have shops, they were a bit like Maplins. All gone now, I would find them useful nowadays as I have to get so much online for projects.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad I wasn't imagining things Kevin!
DeleteBack in the 70'S TANDY made computers then they expanded by buying Radio Shack and dropped the TANDY name except on packaging. Stores were named Radio Shack.
ReplyDeleteAside from various novelty toys using batteries, Radio Shack was the place to go for odd electronic components.
Their stores were all over the US, now gone, they couldn't compete in the cell phone business.
Strange how some established companies can't adapt to change. You would have thought that Tandy/ Shack were well-placed for the new media revolution when it happenned.
DeleteBack in the 70s in Sydney Australia, there were three electronics stores I regularly visited for bits and bobs for my model projects. Radio House, Dick Smith and Tandy Electronics. I especially remember a Tandy fibre optics kit that I used to light the cockpit on my scratch built X Wing fighter, built before the model kits became available.
ReplyDeleteAll long gone now!
Dick Smith! That's a kid's author as well! Do you think you're early modelling helped you get into the film industry Looey?
DeleteFor sure. I was SO inspired by Thunderbirds! Interestingly if I had remained in the UK I might have ended up in the Brit industry, but due to the unionised nature I would have had to settle in a particular niche.
DeleteAs it was, Australia was Cowboy Country and I got to do all sorts of different things based upon my willingness and ability. I even got to jump around inside a giant boar costume, wired up with bullet hits for "Razorback"!
Radio Shack to Razor back! I love threads like this. I've never seen Razorback Looey but I shall track it down, without hopefully getting hit by bullets! So did you know Bob McCarron? the effects guy behind the goriest film of all time, Peter Jackson's Braindead?
Deletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_McCarron
Some great toys came out of Tandy!
ReplyDeletehttps://projectswordtoys.blogspot.com/2019/09/strong-arm-tactics.html?m=1
Ta for the link Wote.
DeleteAh, Radio Shack! My home base for many years! When I was recording movie soundtracks off the TV onto a reel-to-reel recorder during my teenage years, I bought many reels of tape from RS. Before that, though, my father and I would get catalogs from Allied Radio, one of RS's pick-ups or subsidiaries, and we made some cool electronics kits like a ham radio and a voltmeter. And of course you always went to RS to check your TV and radio vacuum tubes! As for their line of crafts and toys, they were just unlike anything else you could get anywhere.
ReplyDeleteThey sound like great times with your Dad Zigg. Great memories. I never got into radio [what is ham radio?] or any electronics. Wish I had cos it sounds like fun!
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