Commodore Advert - 1981

So says Cristoph Sobotta, R&D Director of Stiebel Eltron, in this US advert.

Stiebel Eltron was based in West Germany and came under the purview of Commodore Germany, which was run by Harald Speyer. Commodore ran each of its European units as separate fiefdoms, as founder and CEO Jack Tramiel believed that each country's market should be developed "according to the needs of its culture and people".

Back in 1977, when the PET was launched, there were no Commodore printers or disk units in Germany, and so Speyer marketed the PET towards factories and laboratories. Before long "there were PETs in factories and offices all over Germany"^[1].

The advert employs a blatantly-faked screen-shot on the PET, as it was unable to produce such hi-res graphics, and shows possiby a pre-production mock-up of the VIC-20, which had only just been launched in Europe.

The whole setup was topped off with a nice Cokin star-burst filter.

It also possibly introduces the "Commodore offers a computer for every person, purpose and pocket-book" tag line that ran until at least the following year, and which reflected Commodore founder Jack Tramiel's "for the masses and not the classes" ideology.