Commodore adverts

Ronnie Barker and the Commodore PET Adverts

At the same time as William "Captain Kirk" Shatner was advertising for Commodore in the US, the UK saw TV's Ronnie Barker pressed in to service, with various nods towards Barker's knack of word-play and...

The First Honest-to-Goodness Full Color Computer - William Shatner

The US counterpart to Ronnie Barker, who had been pressed in to service advertising Commodore PETs in the UK with his trademark punnery and word-play, was none other than William "Captain Kirk" Shatner,...

VIC-20 Color Computer - What VIC-20 Can Do For You

This nice gate-fold sales material was made for the VIC-20 a few months after its UK launch. It's full of archetypal 80s people looking at screens, and the blurb contains information on how the VIC-20...

Sinclair Owners - We'll give you £50 trade-in when you trade-up!

This is a curious attempt from Commodore to woo users of the ZX80 and ZX81 - small, low-memory and purely home computers that plugged into the television and could by held in one hand - to switch to a...

At Commodore, we leave you no choice

Here's another straightforward advert from Commodore, which was by far the most prolific of all computer companies if measured by the variety of adverts generated. Shown in this advert is the range of...

Silicon Office: Now you can do all the filing with one finger

This is a slightly disturbing advert produced by Commodore in partnership with (or sponsorship of) Bristol Software Factory, for the latter's Silicon Office product. It's along the lines of the "buy...

Your starter for £150 - the Commodore VIC-20

Commodore was fairly unconventional in its approach to selling computers: rather than just using the traditional tech outlets like Radio Shack, or electronics and nerd magazines, it elected to also sell...

At £299 it's very little. At 64K it's very large

The Commodore 64 was the company's replacement for its VIC-20 machine, the limited but popular home computer which was the first to sell more than 1 million units. Designed by a team including Bob Russell,...

It's only £695. And that's the last reason you should buy it.

The Commodore 500, sometimes known as the P Series, was part of the CBM-II Series - an attempt to produce an update for the original Commodore PET and seen as the company's last chance to break the business...

Home is the last place you should learn about a home computer

Even though the Commodore 64 was on the market, there was still plenty of demand for the VIC-20, launched two years before in 1981 (or three if you count Japan, where it was test-launched in 1980). Whilst...

Commodore 700: It's a picture - and it's worth a thousand words

With a case popularly believed to have been designed by Ferdinand Porsche, but which was actually designed by Commodore's regular industrial designer Ira Velinsky, an on-board 6509 CPU and an option of...

Commodore VIC-20 - Let Commodore expand your horizons

Even though the Commodore 64 had been launched the year before, the VIC-20 was still shifting units - it would end up selling over 2.5 million before it was discontinued in 1985, mostly thanks to being...

If only he'd bought a Commodore computer

The Commodore 700, and its cheaper sibling the 500, were short-lived entrants in Commodore's business range. Confusingly named as the B128, B256 or CBM 128/256-80 in the US or the 700 series in Europe,...

The Commodore 64. Under $600

It's another Commodore advert, from August 1983, playing to Jack Tramiel's famous adage "Computers for the masses, not the classes". The origin of this famous quote dates back to 1980, which Michael...

The Commodore 8296 Business Computer puts power at your command

Released in 1983, the 8296 was the last of the PET line - the world's first personal computer, which had been first shown at Chicago CES in January 1977. Commodore had already tried to update its PET...