Radios – to collect or to add a bit of pizzazz to your decor
There are as many reasons to collect radios as there is the number of collectors. Nostalgia is often the ‘start’ when you found a radio that reminds you of the one you owned as a kid. We have a delightful variety of transistor radios (and more) in our shop.
These very collectible radios – and they ALL WORK – include a 1950s Baseball Player Radio, a Panapet 1970s Red Ball Radio by Panasonic, a 1970s Snoopy Radio, and a 1998 promotional Pepsi Cola Radio.
Baseball Player Radio – 1970s
The Panapet radio is a round novelty radio on a chain, first produced by Panasonic in the early 1970s to commemorate the World Expo in Osaka. Two chrome plated dials on the surface are for tuning and volume, and a tuning display is inset on the surface of the ball. The Panapet is AM band only – no FM. There is a jack for a mono earplug. The Panapet came in several colors including red, yellow, white, blue, purple and avocado green.
The Snoopy AM Radio, 1970s, by Determined Productions, Inc.
Connie Boucher, a pioneer in licensing cartoon characters who provided the inspiration for “Happiness Is a Warm Puppy,” a best-selling 1962 book about Snoopy, the “Peanuts” comic strip character, has died at age 72.
Ms. Boucher, who died here Dec. 20 of complications following heart surgery, was a window dresser for I. Magnin in 1959 when she grew dissatisfied with the quality of coloring books available for her two sons. With her husband, Jim Young, she created a Winnie-the-Pooh coloring book, using a character that was in the public domain. The book sold 50,000 copies.
Two years later she founded Determined Productions Inc. to develop other products based on licensing characters. One of her first efforts was a calendar using the characters in the Charlie Brown comic strip.
The Pepsi-Cola Bottle Cap Radio is vintage 1998.
1998 was also the 100th Anniversary of the Pepsi-Cola brand. CLICK HERE for a bit of history. Do you know what Pepsi was originally named before being branded in 1898: See bottom of this post
Whether you love very collectible novelty radios, early transistor radios, or truly vintage radios and phonographs, we have a wonderful collection. Stop in soon. We’re watchin’ for ya!
You may have grown up in the era when families gathered around their radio to listen to the President address the nation (especially Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt), or possibly listen to your favorite baseball team. Many still remember some of the early radio shows from Amos and Andy and Burns and Allen, The Shadow, Popeye, and even Gunsmoke was first a radio show!
The earliest radio programs of the 1920s were largely unsponsored; radio stations were a service designed to sell radio receivers. By the late 1920s, radio had reached critical mass and saturated the market, necessitating a change in business model. The sponsored musical feature soon became most popular program format. Most early radio sponsorship came in the form of selling the naming rights to the program, as evidenced by such programs as The A&P Gypsies, Champion Spark Plug Hour, The Clicquot Club Eskimos, and King Biscuit Time; commercials as they are known in the modern era were still relatively uncommon and considered intrusive. During the 1930s and 1940s, the leading orchestras were heard often through big band remotes, and NBC’s Monitor continued such remotes well into the 1950s by broadcasting live music from New York City jazz clubs to rural America.
Maybe you remember Kate Smith, or Bob Hope, or even War of the Worlds!
beautiful ARVIN radio
1966 Kensington Solid State Transistor to a Traveler from 1948 and a Craig Radio & Cassette Player 1990s
The history of the radio is very much linked to our country’s history. Radios were used to help us through bad economic times, wars, and more. It was a time when the nation shared the same experience: gathered around their radios and listening to the same news and other programming.
We have floor model radios and a new selection of recently acquired table and portable models. Stop in soon and see how beautiful some of these are. And yes, we’ll be watchin’ for ya.
