Yes Virginia there actually used to be print adverts for the Amiga in the US!

[Beast96GT]

I remember those ads... I remember thinking they were pretty good at the time...

Especially considering the first Amiga commercial I ever saw was on late night MTV (back when they played music, girls) and it was just a mish-mash of clips from games like Dragon's Lair, a Boing ball bouncing around, and some weird voice saying "Amiiiiiiga!" in the background.  I had no idea what it was at the time, but remembered thinking it was a terrible and confusing ad.

=Beast

[JimS]

I can remember spotting a few Amiga ads outside of the Amiga press. They were rare, but there...  Ya know, at one time there were more amiga magazines than amiga users left now. ;-) OK, I exagerate a little there. ;-)

[quarkx]

You would prefer it if they read Razzle?

I never heard of Razzle (must be a European mag), but Playboy is defiantly not what a parent would read. Could you see "Heff's tips for the new dad?" or "The bunnies change diapers?" articles? LOL

No, Playboy caters (or did at that time) to the upperclass male audience (hense the nudie pics), and Commodore should have had an ad to reflect that. Even the (in)famous "2001" Amiga ad would have been more appropriate for the Playboy reader.

[Hell Labs]

Dude.  Orange, black, blue and white.  The GUI looked like it was in CGA at the time.  One could comment that the Apple GUI of that era - being as it was in B/W (heck it may have even been 1 bit, unsure) - was equally ugly but you can at least say that the "choice" of colors on the Mac had a certain minimalistic functional elegance.  The default GUI colors on the A500 were eye-searingly bad.  Showing it in the ads would've made people laugh, not contemplate purchase.

Of course you could make the argument that it could be tweaked (and it could; I used mine in a pre 2.04 "greyscale"), but if C= had done that how many people who may have bought based on advertising would've gotten the machine home and, upon seeing the horror of 1.3's color choice, assumed it was "broken"?

Yes, well then they should have shipped it in a non-disgusting colour scheme then, with a menu pop up on first boot asking if they would prefare the hideousovision colour scheme for use on a TV or something.

My point is that nothing in those ads tell me it even HAS a gui. the mac ads of the time were all about how the mouse was awesome, that it was so easy to do simple things, that there was cut and paste, that you didn't have to learn weird commands. The amiga advert gives me the impression that it's basically a multitasking C64. They've completely glossed over the most important part of the machine. Did commodore even know how important showing the MAJOR difference to the 8bits/PC was?

[tone007]

They've completely glossed over the most important part of the machine.

The most important part of the machine is what it can do.  People didn't care much about user interfaces back when there wasn't a great array to pick from, what sold computers was the idea of capability.

[beller]

Dude.  Orange, black, blue and white.  The GUI looked like it was in CGA at the time.  One could comment that the Apple GUI of that era - being as it was in B/W (heck it may have even been 1 bit, unsure) - was equally ugly but you can at least say that the "choice" of colors on the Mac had a certain minimalistic functional elegance.  The default GUI colors on the A500 were eye-searingly bad.  Showing it in the ads would've made people laugh, not contemplate purchase.

Of course you could make the argument that it could be tweaked (and it could; I used mine in a pre 2.04 "greyscale"), but if C= had done that how many people who may have bought based on advertising would've gotten the machine home and, upon seeing the horror of 1.3's color choice, assumed it was "broken"?

Guess what, Amiga Los Gatos actually did a study, as I recall, that produced those colors on the default workbench!  Something about clarity.  Yep, ugly!  I always moved the orange to red to at least perk it up a bit!

Bob

[beller]

I never heard of Razzle (must be a European mag), but Playboy is defiantly not what a parent would read. Could you see "Heff's tips for the new dad?" or "The bunnies change diapers?" articles? LOL

No, Playboy caters (or did at that time) to the upperclass male audience (hense the nudie pics), and Commodore should have had an ad to reflect that. Even the (in)famous "2001" Amiga ad would have been more appropriate for the Playboy reader.

And male dads don't like to look at those pics?  Heck, how do you think most of them became dads!!  hehe

Seriously, Playboy was the perfect place to put an advertisement.  Lots of dudes, over 18 and upwardly mobile.  How do you think all those DigiView pinups were created?

Regarding the need to show the difference between the 8-bit and Amiga, back then nobody really understood this, or cared much at the time.  You bought the Amiga for a computing future that wasn't very clear.  Commodore didn't want to market the gaming features because they wanted it to be a serious business machine.  Never happened and CBM flopped around trying to find a market until NewTek gave them video...

Bob

[JimS]

The legend has it (according to Amigaworld's "history of the amiga" video) that the Los Gatos crew picked those colors because they were most legible on TV sets through the antenna connection.... they went out and looked for the crappiest TVs they could find to make sure the WB was usuable even there. Personally, I never used an Amiga on a TV. even the composite on a monitor was annoying....

[beller]

Thanks, Jim S.  That jives with what I remembered!


Bob

[Karlos]

Is there a copyright held on those images? I think they'd make a nice gallery addition

Seriously, anybody know?

[Kronos]

Bout that Playboy-thing, did you even look at the picture ? It looks like it's been taken in the 60s not the 80s, so by the time the ad appeared those kids would be in their best Playboy-reading age.

Now think about that add again under that premise.

[Hell Labs]

The most important part of the machine is what it can do.  People didn't care much about user interfaces back when there wasn't a great array to pick from, what sold computers was the idea of capability.

So you're saying the population of people who thought computers are impossible to understand and therefore worthless, aren't worth trying to sell a computer to?  Sure, they said it was "easy to use" a few times in the ad. So did every other company out there, and joe bloggs knows the difference between "easy to use" and whatever the hell LOAD "$", 8,1 means. If you showed that ad to someone on the street in the 80s, then asked them what came to their mind they'd describe a CLI. The ad fails to utilize the most important thing.

[tone007]

So you're saying the population of people who thought computers are impossible to understand and therefore worthless, aren't worth trying to sell a computer to?

No, but showing a picture of some windows with a couple of icons is a whole lot less interesting than telling someone what they can accomplish with the computer.

The ad fails to utilize the most important thing.

I see once you get the idea to be wrong in your head, you hang on tight.  You'll get over that someday.

[Karlos]

Generally, you didn't actually buy a computer for the OS it ran, you bought it for the capabilities it had, which were always best exemplified by the applications that were available. These days, people care a lot more about the OS, but that's mostly down to the fact that these days your OS tends to come with a suite of applications out of the box.

Back in the day, OS1.2/1.3 were fine, but there was nothing about them that you could really sell using pictures in an advert. If anything, seeing the old black/blue/orange/white colour scheme would probably have put people off!

Seeing business software, fancy graphics and music, games, etc. These are what sold systems.

[B00tDisk]

Seriously, anybody know?

The only people who could conceivably hold a copyright on them would be C=.  C= is dead.  Right click, save as, upload to the gallery here.

[robo-ant]

I've seen these ads somewhere.  Even the one with the 60s school photo.

I have a full-page ad for the Amiga 500 that was published in Popular Science.  I threw out the magazine but kept that page.  It was the December 1987 issue, page 21.  I haven't scanned it, but I'll do it when I get a round tuit.

I also have some junk mail that Commodore Canada mailed to me.  Some of it really was junk (trying to sell Commosore PCs), but one helped push me to buy my A1200.