This year, the video game turns 40. Let’s call it an occasion to spend a few more hours in front of our TVs, the place where it all started.
The Magnavox Magnavision Model 8000 DiscoVision Videodisc Player was a “record player that produces beautiful sound and pictures” through your TV. Released in 1978, Magnavision 8000 was the first consumer player of the format you know as Laserdisc.
I would’ve held this Magnavox speaker to my ear and pretended to be deaf, saying clever things like “What’s up, sonny?” Matt Richmond combined it with some scraps of walnut to create an iPod dock.
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The Pitch With mere days left before the dawn of 2008, there’s precious little time left to celebrate a geek milestone: the silver anniversary of the incomparable Magnavox Odyssey gaming console. This particular ad, however, aired in early 1973, about nine months after the Odyssey’s debut. The oddly unenthusiastic narrator terms the product “the electronic game of the future” as a Brady-like couple sets up their rig—a surprisingly laborious process involving plastic overlays. Man and wife enjoy a few rounds of Magnavox Hockey, Tennis, and (ugh) Geography on their “closed-circuit electronic playground,” twiddling the knobs on their toaster-sized controllers. The spot ends with an exhortation to visit your Magnavox dealer (“he’s listed in the Yellow Pages,” natch). A hilarious fossil of a commercial, but also an early example of how technology companies deal with marketing crises—especially when they’re in the midst of pushing truly novel products.
