Where could you buy a Creativision?
Posted: Mon Aug 15, 2011 6:16 pm
While we have pretty good coverage on which companies supposedly imported Creativision in each country, it sometimes is a bit more mysterious where you actually could buy it.
I would like to take Sweden as an example. So far, I have found exactly one (1) reference of the Creativision in contemporary press. That was in the magazine Teknik för Alla, scans available on the website. This was an all-purpose technical magazine which would write just as much about the latest cars as hi-fi, a bit about general electronics, sometimes computers and rarely video games. The more specialized home computer and video game press didn't mention Creativision even once. It suggests to me it never was very popular or generally available.
In this case, we know Elof Hansson imported the system - the only article from late 1983 says so. A while ago I bought a boxed Creativision with a number of cartridges and some tapes. The seller turned out to be the grandson of the founder of mail order company Hobbex. They sell all kinds of technical and hobbyist products, from electronics and tools to training equipment, pranks, sexy stickers and other things that might tickle the fantasy mainly of 12 year old boys. Back in 1983/84, they even sold some games which is why I just bought myself a copy of the winter 1983/84 catalog. It looked promising with a Competition Pro clone joystick on the front (said to fit both VIC-20, Atari and Intellivision, of which the latter appears to have been a typo) and a complete VIC-20 system on the back side.
Inside the catalog, they sold a few handheld games, but that's it. No signs of Creativision here as well! Still as some of the games I bought from the above mentioned guy had price stickers with the Hobbex logo still on them, it suggests at one point they had the console for sale, at least in their only store. The question then is which time period one could expect to find it in mail order. I might look for a summer of 1984 or even winter 1984/85 catalog, as well as some other mail order companies like Ellos or Josefsons. But even if it shows up in a catalog in late 1984, it would be a full year after the Swedish launch.
I have some ideas in which stores one might have been able to buy a Creativision, most likely cooperative Obs! or Domus, but that is only speculation. While it isn't terribly important now, more than 25 years later, the general availability would say something about what the chances were that the machine would be successful. I know in other countries, mainly Australia but also Italy, Germany etc it seems to have been released much earlier than late 1983 and probably also written about, advertised and brought to stores in a much broader fashion.
It is quite possible that Elof Hansson sat with a huge number of unsold, even manual localized consoles, games and peripherals that they let go for a relatively low amount of money by early 1985, when mail order companies like Hobbex might have picked it up as there was not much money to lose. In any case, it doesn't seem to have hit the mail order market right away like I originally had thought...
I would like to take Sweden as an example. So far, I have found exactly one (1) reference of the Creativision in contemporary press. That was in the magazine Teknik för Alla, scans available on the website. This was an all-purpose technical magazine which would write just as much about the latest cars as hi-fi, a bit about general electronics, sometimes computers and rarely video games. The more specialized home computer and video game press didn't mention Creativision even once. It suggests to me it never was very popular or generally available.
In this case, we know Elof Hansson imported the system - the only article from late 1983 says so. A while ago I bought a boxed Creativision with a number of cartridges and some tapes. The seller turned out to be the grandson of the founder of mail order company Hobbex. They sell all kinds of technical and hobbyist products, from electronics and tools to training equipment, pranks, sexy stickers and other things that might tickle the fantasy mainly of 12 year old boys. Back in 1983/84, they even sold some games which is why I just bought myself a copy of the winter 1983/84 catalog. It looked promising with a Competition Pro clone joystick on the front (said to fit both VIC-20, Atari and Intellivision, of which the latter appears to have been a typo) and a complete VIC-20 system on the back side.
Inside the catalog, they sold a few handheld games, but that's it. No signs of Creativision here as well! Still as some of the games I bought from the above mentioned guy had price stickers with the Hobbex logo still on them, it suggests at one point they had the console for sale, at least in their only store. The question then is which time period one could expect to find it in mail order. I might look for a summer of 1984 or even winter 1984/85 catalog, as well as some other mail order companies like Ellos or Josefsons. But even if it shows up in a catalog in late 1984, it would be a full year after the Swedish launch.
I have some ideas in which stores one might have been able to buy a Creativision, most likely cooperative Obs! or Domus, but that is only speculation. While it isn't terribly important now, more than 25 years later, the general availability would say something about what the chances were that the machine would be successful. I know in other countries, mainly Australia but also Italy, Germany etc it seems to have been released much earlier than late 1983 and probably also written about, advertised and brought to stores in a much broader fashion.
It is quite possible that Elof Hansson sat with a huge number of unsold, even manual localized consoles, games and peripherals that they let go for a relatively low amount of money by early 1985, when mail order companies like Hobbex might have picked it up as there was not much money to lose. In any case, it doesn't seem to have hit the mail order market right away like I originally had thought...