Store Brand vs Name Brand Game and Movie Media

[tripletopper]

The interesting trend in the 70s was store-branded video games. There were store branded everything in the 70s.

 

I posed this question asking about "linear media" on lddb.com, a laser disc website, and I knew about the Sears Beta, and later found out about the JCPenney VHS, and was wondering if there was a store brand Laser Disc or Selectavision (a format often confused with Laser Disc, but different). I used video game store brands like Sears Telegames, Sears Super Telegames, Tandy Vision, and Montgomery Ward Game System, which were respectively, Atari 2600, Intellivision, Intellivision, and Bally as examples.

 

I don't know the logic behind it. I assume it was to keep store brand loyalty. But I assume it can backfire.

 

If Sears was talking about the Telegames and Super Telegames, and didn't have an Atari 260 and Intellivision section, if you were from Mars, you'd say the were promoting their own brand. Kind of like what Aldi does with most of their food products.

 

Was their marketing not to mention the brand name, and use only the store name? I understand they wanted store loyalty, but did they keep more sales they'd lose to other stores with store brands, or did they lose more sales from brand name people by browsing and seeing only store brand stuff?

 

I'm trying to figure out whether it was a net positive to have store branding or a net negative. If you've owned any of these system during their prime, whether you were a kid, a parent, or a childless grownup at the time: Atari 2600, Intellivision, Bally Astrocade, Sears Telegames, Sears Super Telegames, Tandyvision, Montgomery Ward Game System, the question is "Have you dabbled or stayed loyal, ether out of ignorance of their intercompatibility or out of pride?"

 

By the way, I voted no interactive media, since my first was a Colecovision, which had no store brand problems, and a Sanyo BetaCord (a name brand), and dad didn't avoid Sears for Beta tapes. I think they were branded as Sears Beta brand tapes, which he has bought before. I see them downstairs, so No for avoiding Sears Brand Beta tapes.

[tripletopper]

P.s. Mods, please move topics from the similar topic into this one. I posted both and when I first voted, I forgot about my Sanyo BetaCord and dad buying Sears tapes, so I was trying to reset the poll. The old poll was erased. Also the other comments on the previous thread are valid here. Please merge them.

[NE146]

It took me a little while figure out there was some kind of a difference between Sears & Atari games. e.g. Wondering why I had "Target Fun" when the catalog clearly said Air Sea Battle. I don't think it really mattered to me though once I realized the games were the exact same... long as they played! I didn't have much of a choice anyway since my primary source for games was the Sears catalog.. I couldn't just find them at a local store.

[Keatah]

Initially I was confused and I always expected something to be different among the store-branded carts vs atari-branded carts. But. Alas. There was none. It didn't stop me from accumulating both sets however. Several years later I would learn about branding.

 

While I didn't think the cartridges were el-cheapo, I thought the console might be, and thus always thought the Tele-Games VCS to be inferior. Of course today I know that isn't true.

[PlaysWithWolves]

Sears was the Amazon of the '70s and '80s. I think we only had a catalog store, where one could order from the catalog and have items shipped there for pickup. Small town life, amirite?

[lingyi]

The first 2600 we got in late 1977 or early 1978 was from Sears because of their easy return policy (which we unfortunately had to take advantage of). Sears never hid the fact that they rebranded many of their products and the Sears name on certain products (Kenmore, Craftsman) were a badge of quality (which sadly has fallen greatly in recent years). Long before the liberal return policies of Costco and Sam's Club, buying a Sears branded product was a guarantee of service and easy return.

 

There was also a sense of buying American, even though the products were actually made overseas. The OP had a Sanyo Betacord, but Sears also their own models branded with their name and I suspect far more Sears Betacord's were sold than Sanyo. The VHS camp won in part because of RCA and other American brand names, despite JVC and Panasonic being superior quality. Part of Betamax's failure was due to their not allowing other manufacturers to make their own Betamax's. The only Betamax's other than Sony were rebadged and slighly stripped Zenith's. IIRC, there's a licensing reason why Sanyo's are Betacord and not Betamax. .

 

BTW, Sears and JC Pennys did market CED players (Selectavision was RCA's name for their video products, i.e. CED Players and VCRs), as well as Montgomery Ward, another big player in the 60's & 70's. Here's a link to a site that talks about CED players http://www.cedmagic.com/home/cedfaq.html#twoone

 

AFAIK, other than Pioneer, the only other brands of laserdisc players were Philips Magnavox (the original Discovison) and Sony (who manufactured their own players). I believe Sears and possibly JC Pennys may have sold the original Magnavox players, but nothing under their own name.

Edited September 8, 2018 by lingyi

[lingyi]

Sears was the Amazon of the '70s and '80s. I think we only had a catalog store, where one could order from the catalog and have items shipped there for pickup. Small town life, amirite?

 

Good analogy! I used to spend hours pouring over the Sears and Pennys catalogs, first for toys and later for electronics.

 

BTW, it's hard to believe now, but RadioShack's Tandy and Realistic were highly respected brand names back then.

[tripletopper]

It’s been quite a few months.

 

It looks in terms of movies, there was an equal amount of loyalty and treachery on both the name brand and the store brand. 2 avoided store brand but 2 bought store brand when buying a name brand movie player. 1 bought name brand and one avoided name brand for movies. A net wash. Not surprising since Sears Beta was advertised as Beta, and JCPenney VHS was advertised as VHS. Plus Sears, Penney, and Ward all had CEDs, (but most people who don’t own CEDs but are aware of the difference between it and Laser Disc know it better by its RCA trade name Selectavision.), but no one made a store model Laser Disc Player.

 

Games have different results. Both people who had Store-branded players avoided name brand media. So Sears thought that the Telegames name would keep them tethered to Sears (similarly with Radio Shack and Montgomery Ward), and the 2 that voted did. And no one voted to go to the world outside that store.

 

Of course it had a negative effect, where 2 brand name purchasers avoided the store brand. So if you bought your 2600, INTV, or Astrocade, anywhere except Sears, Radio Shack, or Montgomery Ward, you avoided that store thinking it was a proprietary store brand.

 

But one brand-name purchaser did buy a store brand. One purchaser either knew or suspected there was an intercompatibility, probably when 3rd party boxes mentioned both Atari 2600 and Sears Telegames. Which is one better than the other way.

 

If this poll was indicative of the nation as a whole, Sears Telegames, Sears Super Telegames, Tandyvision, and Montgomery Ward video game systems were a net winner for those stores involved.

 

If that were true, why don't we have any Gamestop Micromaxes or Wal Mart FunVisions today?

[pacman000]

I assume Atari agreed to produce private label products because they were a small company which needed to get into Sears.

 

Sony & Microsoft are large companies with more bargaining power.

[godslabrat]

I also can't think of any vendor today who has enough clout to re-brand media. The closest I can think of being Wal-Mart having special slipcases for their Bargain DVDs, but I think that's more a case of movie companies saying "Hey, if people will buy this 12-year-old Ben Stiller dud for $5 if we put a new wrapper on it, let's do it!". It's not like people are so fanatical about Wal-Mart that they want to buy only Wal-Mart movies.