Gaming consoles from a 1977 Montgomery Ward catalog.

Empire

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Gaming consoles from a 1977 Montgomery Ward catalog.

It's Christmas of 1977, the Atari 2600 had just been released last October for the hefty price of $198 (same price as a Wii now). Your kid is begging for a video game system but you don't want to pay the big bucks.

What else is available?

Montgomery Ward has the answer!




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Check out the price tag on the Bally Arcade below.

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The Combat one always looked like fun. Anyone ever play it?

I'll take that Bally Arcade (Astrocade) for a little less...
 
I had a Telstar arcade (The triangle one at the top). It was a bad game BITD. The Bally Astrocade is a good system.
 
That $44 colormatic looks like the system we had as kids before we got an atari. I know we had some kind of sears brand of pong too.
 
I had a Telstar Combat BITD! It was pretty cool, with its Battlezone style controllers, and two player simultaneous play. Have no idea what happened to it though, haven't seen it since about '82.

I currently have a Bally Astrocade with about 20 games, including "The Incredible Wizard", a virtually arcade perfect Wizard of Wor. Got it at a thrift store in the late 90s for $8.00.

Kyle :cool:
 
Man, I remember how fucking expensive calculators were back then. My unkle always had an old LED one... And he treated it like it was an Ipod or some shit.

Any time you got into an argument, he'd whip it out and start putting his numbers in there (which were based on guesswork), and come up with something. It made for a good show.
 
Yeah this catalog is great.
One of my favorite shots is of the 10 year old showing off his kick-ass beer can collection???



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Yeah this catalog is great.
One of my favorite shots is of the 10 year old showing off his kick-ass beer can collection???



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This picture is a gem for multiple reasons.

(Where can I get these clips?)
 
Lol, I'm scanning these directly out of an actual 1977 Montgomery Ward Christmas catalog.

Months ago, while our new house was being built, we had a large construction trash/burn pile off to the side. One day as I was installing the upstairs interior window trim I happened to notice a small stack of magazines on the pile below. I had no idea what they were but from a distance I could tell they were old. The first thing that raced thru my mind was that it might have been old comics or skin mags. I ran outside and began rummaging thru the stack. No comics or nudie mags unfortunately but I did manage to salvage a few of these old catalogs. They're in pretty decent shape for being over 30 years old but I have no idea why someone would wait over 3 decades to finally throw them out. I'm guessing one of the contractors might have had some old shit from home in their van and saw the opportunity to get rid of it but it could have been any one around.
 
Old Christmas catalogs are great. I have fond memories of sitting at my grandparents house looking at the sears/jc penney "wish" book. I have bought a few of the older 80's catalogs just to see the ads for classic toy lines.
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I'll have to dig them out and see what game systems were for sale then.
 
Holy Smokes!!

I used to have a setup like that for my beer can collection. Not as cool, though, instead of clcking in, you had to use little adhesive pads to hold the cans in place. I remember that I was watching "The Shining" on cable for the first time while my parents were across the street chatting with the neighbors and the whole thing fell off the wall making an incredibly loud crash and I almost shit myself......


ArcadeMaze
 
What I want to know is how much fucking meat did the average family of 1977 actually eat?





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Damn, they should have just thrown the whole cow in there!

I have that GI Joe tank thats pictured above. Its in my attic with the rest of my GI Joe crap.
 
This picture is a gem for multiple reasons.

(Where can I get these clips?)

Looking at the beer can collection again... it made me wonder. What happened to all those varieties of beer that we could collect during the 70's? I remember as a kid, that I could find all sorts of different cans along the sides of the road. On relooking, I remember having almost all those cans... I am guessing that almost none of those breweries are still in business today.

ArcadeMaze
 
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