bigfriendly wrote: Looking back Coleco was such a crap runned company! They succeeded with so much in spite of themselves.
No sir. You can have your opinion, but I strongly disagree. Coleco was a company that took risks and made some fine products, and I wish they had lasted longer in our hobby.
Coleco was a company founded in the Great Depression that found a way to reinvent themselves in the mid 1970s by switching product lines entirely. From out of nowhere, they competed well with Atari with several well made Pong era Telstar consoles. This included the innovative Telstar Tank console, the Marksman (with an awesome light gun) and the odd triangular Arcade with light gun and driving controller. These are 1st generation pioneering consoles. This was not success 'in spite of themselves' at all.
In the years around 1980, Coleco handheld games - from the simple Electronic Quarterback to their 2 player Head to Head line - were commonly seen bleeping and blooping all over. The small arcade units are quite collectible.
- Coleco Mini Arcade.JPG (67.99 KiB) Viewed 1078 times
Coleco then went head to head with much larger Mattel and Warner backed Atari. I am not a big fan of the Colecovision, but the way they got the rights to Donkey Kong was smart, and the Gemini and the adapter to play Atari 2600 games was smart too. Coleco also gave us one of the most legendary Must Have Christmas gifts ever in the Cabbage Patch Doll line. They company failed quickly after this, from things such as the 1983 Crash that also hurt Atari and Mattel, and the decision about the ADAM. However, the ADAM was an attempt at an entry level computer at a time went that seemed like it might be the future. On top of all that, the success of the Cabbage Patch Dolls gave them the freedom to take some big risks that didn't pan out, such as buying Trivial Pursuit assets. Even that was defensible as spreading risk, but both the dolls and the game turned out not to have legs in the marketplace.
This was a relatively small company not afraid to take some risks. For 10 years, it not only worked but worked extremely well. They either created or bought rights to new product lines to broaden their audience. It ended badly for them in the mid 80s, in part due to aggressive investments or the fickle nature of the marketplace hot item is tomorrow's bargain bin item.
I think they left a fine legacy, and would have liked to see them (and Mattel Electronics for that matter) last longer in the video game or electronic amusements business.