Atari 2600 Consumers Distributing Catalog Games

[Bodyshots]

Does anyone here remember the Consumers Distributing Catalog?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumers_Distributing

 

I remember this place as a kid. They originally opened in 1957 and I can remember getting dragged to this place in the late 70s and early 80s with my mother. You'd walk in to the store and they'd have a few tables with their catalogs on it for you to view. If you saw something that you wanted in their catalog, you'd write the item numbers down and then wait your turn in line. There would be a long counter, usually with 4 employees on the average working the counter. They'd take your want list and then visually go look in the back if they had the item you wanted. Generally it was always 5 percent of the time they would have what you wanted in stock. Your item(s) would always have to be ordered. Consumers Distributing would give you a time frame the item would potentially arrive and then you would have to call or check back in to see if your item arrived. And if your item was there, you'd have to wait in line again and then pay for the item.

I remember they never had any items you could view in the store, just the catalogs, because any small amounts they did have would be in the back of the store.

 

Anyways, they did sell Atari Consoles and games. However they generally cost more then most places around town so I believe their sales were quite low. I still have a couple of games from there, I remember the parents did purchase a couple for me from there because it was the only place that could supposedly get stock of a couple games.

 

Does anyone know if Consumers Distributing owned rights to Atari Cartridges? (I can post some pictures later when I dig out the games) Their boxes were 'white label' and had stickers on the boxes with their company name on it. I'll find it and post it shortly, I believe it also had a different picture too.

At that time, more people seemed to be shopping there instead of Zellers.

Does this ring a bell with anyone?

Edited June 13, 2014 by Bodyshots

[teh_supar_hackr]

I never even heard of this place, but it sounds kind of like getting something from Ikea, but with games added to the mix and with the item you want not being in-store most the time. Do you have an image of a white label A2600 game? I think I may have seen an example or two on eBay.

[Jumpman1981]

Never heard of them, but their service system is identical to that of the UK's Argos.

Edited October 2, 2018 by Jumpman1981

[Keatah]

Very much like Service Merchandise here in the U.S. Mid-West area.

[Shawn]

Any video games for the Atari or the Nintendo I personally bought from Consumers where all in normal retail packaging aside from one or maybe two of the white boxes you are talking about. I didn't see them often and I'm pretty sure they had both retail and white box copies of the same game. I always thought it must have been a dented can sale or something where the original box was trashed or it was a customer return without packaging being resold. I could be way off on that guess though. Consumers didn't own the rights to anything Atari that I have ever known or read of from any reliable source.