This ad for Seymour's Jewelers, which ran in the paper on July 2, 1954, recommended that readers bring some music along 'over the fourth' with a Motorola Console Tone portable radio.
"Here is a portable with 6 tube performance and power," the ad notes. "Largest, lightest speaker ever used in a set this size, gives console tone. Long life batteries. Handsome and lightweight in its streamlined bakelite case of green, grey or maroon."
The radio sold for a mere $49.95 (that's $583.19 in today's inflated greenbacks). Or, the purchaser could buy it with no money down for $1.25 a week (or $14.59 today).
"Sorry, kids – we couldn't afford to buy food for dinner tonight because we bought that radio! But we'll have fun at the cookout barbecue picnic beach tomorrow, listening to the radio while we scavenge for food in trash cans at Lakeview."
I like the illustration of the glove-wearing woman strutting along, swinging her expensive radio like a sack of onions.
The ad also includes another portable device: the new Motorola Porta-Clock Radio. Priced slightly less at $44.95, it boasted an "accurate, rubber-mounted clock built right into your powerful portable."
Seymour's even threw in a free, beautiful 3' x 5' beach mat with the purchase of either radio.
Regular readers of this blog know that I mainly post ads like this so I can try to find examples of the pictured items that have somehow avoided the trash can over the years. But seventy years ago is a long time. After a fruitless search on eBay using various descriptions, I finally noticed the model number 63L in the ad - and suddenly a whole lot of them appeared.
7 comments:
I really dug the look of the clock!
Does the radio with the clock look like an owl 🦉 to you?
It’s interesting that a jewelry store would be selling radios. Todd
I suspect Don Trumbull and Geoge Lucas used the clock radio as a model for some of their 'droids.
I'm not quite old enough to recall 1954, but I remember, very clearly, when transistor radios showed up on the beach near home when I was a kid. I didn't like being forced to listen to what other people thought was "good" music and so felt doubly-justified in my hatred of boom-boxes.
I remember both portable radios like this one and the transistor sets that would supplant them in the late 50s. This 1954 model used tubes. I don't think that kind of chassis would withstand much exposure to sand and moisture, so maybe not great for the beach unless you didn't mind jeopardizing your $583.19 investment.
Transistor radios had the benefit of being much cheaper. They were the vanguard of imported electronics, being largely made in Japan. But because of their size, they did not have the advantage of the bigger speaker in the Motorola.
I have a small collection of both tubed and transistor sets in my basement, including a few clock radios
I can hear that classic song "Transistor Sister" from 1960 by Freddy Cannon in my head now.It has a better ring to it instead of I don't know,let's say "Tubehead Fred".Or how about "Grube The Tube".
My dad put together a little red transistor radio from a Radio Shack kit in about 1964 - clamped it to my bicycle fender and I rode around the neighborhood all summer with the antenna up listening to music…and static. Oh for those lazy carefree days of summer…
"I can hear that classic song "Transistor Sister" from 1960 by Freddy Cannon..."
Video killed the radio star.
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