Why the Sears versions existed

[zzip]

I've never found a good explanation as to why the Sears Telegames existed. Best I read was that "Sears didn't allow anything but their own brands in that era" But I think I recall seeing name-brand (non-sears) mechandise in the stores at the time.

 

So I was hoping to get the background and maybe some additional discussion:

 

Why?

 

How was this a good idea for Sears, don't the public generally see store-brand merchandise as inferior to name-brand?

 

Was this good/bad/neither for Atari?

 

Why did no other retailers do this?

 

Sears also rebranded the games. Did the public believe the Sears and Atari VCS were incompatable? From my personal standpoint, my friend owned the Sears VCS, but we all knew the Atari games were interchangable.

 

EDIT: Yes store-brand products are still common, but usually they are done for commodity products. I.e store-brand peas are not much different than Green Giant Peas, or an "Insignia" TV from Best Buy still watches the same programs.

 

Game consoles have never really been commodities though. One console is (usually) incompatible with the next, so that's what makes this particular move confusing to me. Wasn't there the risk consumers would think the Atari and Sears consoles were incompatible and avoid the Sears one?

Edited January 23, 2017 by zzip

[Gentlegamer]

This was a fairly common retail thing in past decades for many types of products.

 

It's common now if you look at pharmacy items, the generic store brand for Target and Wal-mart has identical ingredients to the name brand and is often actually produced by the name brand company.

[zzip]

This was a fairly common retail thing in past decades for many types of products.

 

It's common now if you look at pharmacy items, the generic store brand for Target and Wal-mart has identical ingredients to the name brand and is often actually produced by the name brand company.

I know, but the perception is often that those store brands are lower quality than name brands. I remember back in the late 70s, those store brands were positioned as "inflation fighters", emphasizing the cheap-but-adequate.

 

Was the Sears console cheaper than Atari?

 

Wasn't Sears an at least somewhat high-end retailer back then?

[+SpiceWare]

Was this good/bad/neither for Atari?

I seem to recall in one of the Stella at 20 videos they mentioned that this was a very good thing for Atari. I don't recall which tape it was on.

 

Sears also rebranded the games. Did the public believe the Sears and Atari VCS were incompatable? From my personal standpoint, my friend owned the Sears VCS, but we all knew the Atari games were interchangable.

 

I don't know anybody who didn't know they were the compatible. Only thing I didn't like about Sears was they renamed some of the games - visit from grandma, "Your folks sent me a list of games^* that you have, here's a few new games to have fun with!".

 

^* list includes Air-Sea Battle, Combat, and Dodge 'Em.

[syn]

Back then it wasn't so much high end as reliable, durable and value for your money.

 

Many parents may not have known Atari but they knew Sears.

[Gentlegamer]

Back then it wasn't so much high end as reliable, durable and value for your money.

 

Many parents may not have known Atari but they knew Sears.

 

This along with perhaps warranty at a trusted retailer is why retail rebrands were done.

[BassGuitari]

Best I read was that "Sears didn't allow anything but their own brands in that era" But I think I recall seeing name-brand (non-sears) mechandise in the stores at the time.

As far as I can tell, that's really about all it boiled down to. As to why some merch had to be Sears-branded and some didn't, I couldn't tell you. Those situations were probably case-by-case agreements between Sears and the vendors.

 

Whether it was good for Sears: It probably was, at least at first. The Sears version of the first home Pong game actually launched before the Atari-branded version, so for a brief time you could only get Pong at Sears. The Sears brand still carried a lot of clout in the '70s, so I doubt there was much perception that the "Video Arcade" was necessarily inferior to the "Video Computer System," although I've read many accounts of brand-snobbery by owners of Atari systems sort of looking down their noses at Sears units.

 

Whether it was good for Atari: Like I said, Sears was a major player at the time and moved plenty of Video Arcade consoles and games, which were sold to them by Atari. So Atari made plenty of money from the deal. Whether they were less expensive than Atari-branded systems, I don't know offhand. That would depend on the retailer. If it was, I don't imagine it would have been much cheaper.

 

Why no other retailers did this: Good question. I guess it just comes to individual agreements between the vendor (Atari) and retailers. Atari must have been able to refuse any such demands to re-brand the console, if they indeed came up. On a related note, Radio Shack had the Tandyvision, but no other re-branded major console.

[zzip]

As far as I can tell, that's really about all it boiled down to. As to why some merch had to be Sears-branded and some didn't, I couldn't tell you. Those situations were probably case-by-case agreements between Sears and the vendors.

 

Whether it was good for Sears: It probably was, at least at first. The Sears version of the first home Pong game actually launched before the Atari-branded version, so for a brief time you could only get Pong at Sears. The Sears brand still carried a lot of clout in the '70s, so I doubt there was much perception that the "Video Arcade" was necessarily inferior to the "Video Computer System," although I've read many accounts of brand-snobbery by owners of Atari systems sort of looking down their noses at Sears units.

 

Whether it was good for Atari: Like I said, Sears was a major player at the time and moved plenty of Video Arcade consoles and games, which were sold to them by Atari. So Atari made plenty of money from the deal. Whether they were less expensive than Atari-branded systems, I don't know offhand. That would depend on the retailer. If it was, I don't imagine it would have been much cheaper.

 

Why no other retailers did this: Good question. I guess it just comes to individual agreements between the vendor (Atari) and retailers. Atari must have been able to refuse any such demands to re-brand the console, if they indeed came up. On a related note, Radio Shack had the Tandyvision, but no other re-branded major console.

 

I guess Radio Shack is a good example of a retailer that only sold their own brands and seemed to thrive back then. But by the 90s, that policy seemed ridiculous. By then people would rather have a "Kenwood", "Sony", "Alpine", etc, and not "Realistic".

 

I guess another interesting topic would be how Radio Shack ever thrived back then, in all the popular malls no less! when their products were offbeat and geared more towards hobbyists back then than the general public.

 

Were people just not brand-conscious in the same way in the 70s? I was too young then to really pay attention to such things.

Edited January 23, 2017 by zzip

[spacecadet]

Sears was a *much* bigger name than Atari at the time. (You can argue that they still are, although both are greatly diminished brands.) Atari was basically unknown to most people, whereas Sears was a catalog in everybody's home and was basically the "general store" for the entire country. This was pre-Wal-Mart, but Sears was always a little more upscale than that - they weren't a discount retailer. (That was Wal-Mart's innovation, and how they defeated the more expensive Sears.)

 

So my understanding is that Atari basically jumped at the chance to rebrand their consoles as Sears consoles. It'd be like if you had a new smartphone you wanted to sell and Apple came up to you and said they wanted it to be the new iPhone. *And* you get to keep your company's name on it on the back of the phone, and continue selling it yourself under your own brand name! No exclusivity! There's nobody that wouldn't kill to have a deal like that.

 

Sears did this with a lot of stuff. I don't know if it was everything, but it was a lot. Some of the "other brands" they sold were actually just brands they invented, like Kenmore or Craftsman.

 

It wasn't totally unique to them - JC Penney even sold shotguns branded as JC Penney!

[zzip]

Sears was a *much* bigger name than Atari at the time. (You can argue that they still are, although both are greatly diminished brands.) Atari was basically unknown to most people, whereas Sears was a catalog in everybody's home and was basically the "general store" for the entire country. This was pre-Wal-Mart, but Sears was always a little more upscale than that - they weren't a discount retailer. (That was Wal-Mart's innovation, and how they defeated the more expensive Sears.)

 

So my understanding is that Atari basically jumped at the chance to rebrand their consoles as Sears consoles. It'd be like if you had a new smartphone you wanted to sell and Apple came up to you and said they wanted it to be the new iPhone. *And* you get to keep your company's name on it on the back of the phone, and continue selling it yourself under your own brand name! No exclusivity! There's nobody that wouldn't kill to have a deal like that.

 

Sears did this with a lot of stuff. I don't know if it was everything, but it was a lot. Some of the "other brands" they sold were actually just brands they invented, like Kenmore or Craftsman.

 

It wasn't totally unique to them - JC Penney even sold shotguns branded as JC Penney!

 

lol, true but I consider the Atari of today an imposter who just happens to own the rights to the name. But analysts think Sears could bite the dust this year, and Atari never seems to stay dead.

 

The iPhone comparison makes sense, but it's hard to imagine any retailer having that pull today-- A Walmart-branded Xbox/PS4 being more desirable than the real thing? Can't picture it. Different world, I guess

[Gentlegamer]

40 years ago was a different world, yes.

[Rom Collector]

Sears was a reputable company people respected. Walmart, not so much.

[doctorclu]

I was reading this and thinking about how in recent times retailers will have their exclusive products. Such as:

 

Wal-Mart having the light cycle that would have been for Clu.

Dollar General selling a intellivision and Coleco Flashback with one extra game.

 

Slight draw to get people to consider their version of the product. Retailers still have their own pull. For the retailer I work for we had our own tin copy of Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

 

Though I think like it was said above, in the case of Sears it was them selling a good product with the guarentee of their good name behind it. Whatever the case, I started out with a Sears Telegames console.

 

Sears had these outlet stores and my family was able to get an Atari VCS for an excellent price!

[Gentlegamer]

I recall a lot of Montgomery Wards branded electronics, too.

[DesertJets]

I think you need to remember that Sears was at the time the world's largest retailer by revenue, by a fairly substantial margin. Sears was a company that built the world's tallest building to house its corporate HQ. Sears was trusted and was everywhere literally by virtue of its catalog. I get the impression that brand consciousness, at least for durable goods like electronics and appliances that weren't high end, was not as big then.

 

I strongly suspect the other reason was that at the time for Atari it is either make a Sears-branded version or not sell in Sears at all.

[+sramirez2008]

Because its sexy...

 

[Flojomojo]

40 years ago was a different world, yes.

 

In many different ways! There was a big movement to "buy American" because of the economy of the time. Atari sounds Japanese. Sears is all-American.

 

 

A few industries (mattresses, appliances) still work this way -- one factory product, many different brands and labels to put on it.

 

I think the internet is flattening the world a bit, and there's way less stigma attached to goods from Asia nowadays.

[zzip]

Thanks for the responses everyone! I guess what I was missing was how highly regarded and powerful the Sears brand name was. My family always seemed to prefer JC Penney to Sears (and even they were quite different then-- they had a prominent Videogame and Toy section)- So I guess we didn't have that Sears=quality mindset.

 

and I guess I've also been conditioned to equate store brand = cheap; possibly inferior quality. So I've always seen the Sears consoles as somehow cheapening the product. Now I better understand the mindset back then.

[zylon]

I'd like to see a Sears flashback unit someday.

[Zonie]

I'd like to see a Sears flashback unit someday.

It'd probably be a K-Mart Flashback...

Edited January 24, 2017 by Zonie

[+sramirez2008]

I'd like to see a Sears flashback unit someday.

 

With a thin strip of walnut wood grain.

[InfoMan]

Thanks for the responses everyone! I guess what I was missing was how highly regarded and powerful the Sears brand name was. My family always seemed to prefer JC Penney to Sears (and even they were quite different then-- they had a prominent Videogame and Toy section)- So I guess we didn't have that Sears=quality mindset.

 

and I guess I've also been conditioned to equate store brand = cheap; possibly inferior quality. So I've always seen the Sears consoles as somehow cheapening the product. Now I better understand the mindset back then.

 

Yes, the store brand thing of today is not how it used to be. The store brand thing today is what we used to call the "generic" version. Sears (and Craftsman) were very good names back then.

[high voltage]

It made Atari money?

[S1500]

I wonder what an Xbox or Playstation would look like today with Sears branding. That would be hilarious.

 

Also, rename the games.

 

Instead of Gran Turismo or Forza, it would be "Auto Racer"

[tep392]

It wasn't totally unique to them - JC Penney even sold shotguns branded as JC Penney!

That reminds me, my father gave me an old 35mm Pentax camera and accesories a while back. It included a JC Penny branded flash and zoom lens.