Sorry about the length of this ad but you have to give it to the people who designed it - make it as loooong as possible and get the customer excited about the 286 processor (ah the days before they put the p in to pentium. Yet look at the price! As Shaggy would say - yikes! Despite the high class processing power of the 286, $2,699 is rather steep for 1987 prices, don't you think? A real WTF moment before the term acronym was invented.

If that price is something they would not get away with nowadays, the advertisment above harkens back to when the Mad Men could be overtly sexist and get away with it. If she can only cook as well as Honeywell can compute is the byline. Oh dear. The Honeywell Kitchen Computer never quite did what it promised either - to revolutionise kitchen planning but although you may mark them down for the innate sexism of their ad they were prescient in one way. Many people do use their laptops (etc) in the kitchen these days, albeit not always to help them cook. This product came out in 1969, the year after 2001: A Space Odyssey. More optimistic times perhaps?

Although the word hubris might spring immediately to mind with the advertising campaign for the short lived Honeywell Kitchen Helper, then chutzpah might be an appropriate word to describe Apple's 1976 ad above. Two hunded years after the revolution and they had the audacity to tell the business world that they could make better decisions than Jefferson by using their computer systems. Crikey!

Staying with Apple for a while, they certainly knew how to shock - male nudity (partial or otherwise) was virtually unheard of in advertising in1980 but Apple were struggling with getting their products' uses across to the wider population. So, they started a creative writing competition, asking people to write about the unusual or interesting use you've found for your Apple. It can only be wondered how many of the entries were deemd unsuitable for digestion by the general population. Today, the wording of the competition would have to be thought through very, very carefully.
Perhaps it was a hard lesson, but there was more than a single fatal flaw comparing utilities software with superheros as Norton did in 1995. Mmm.

Perhaps it was a hard lesson, but there was more than a single fatal flaw comparing utilities software with superheros as Norton did in 1995. Mmm.
One company that could see the future was Atari - this ad from 1982 does play it safe in a number of ways. It emphasises the educational advantages of a home computer, it stresses that you can solve problems like mortage and loan analysis and that their home computer will allow you to manage your world a lot better. However. The little girl is playing Caverns of Mars. Way ahead of their time!
Give a Gift
If you enjoyed this article, please consider making a gift to help Kuriositas to continue to bring you fascinating features, photographs and videos.
Thank you!