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What happened to the Minicades?


MrBeefy

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It's pretty funny they threw "ColecoVision" on the front of the manual, right under the Coleco logo. I get that they own the rights to use both of those words or whatever, but it seems like they'll just slap "ColecoVision" on anything that they put out at this point. Pretty silly.. :/

 

 

As I said, that is a way to get a legitimate specimen for their trademark application and make sure they keep a tight hold on the trademark.

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It's pretty funny they threw "ColecoVision" on the front of the manual, right under the Coleco logo. I get that they own the rights to use both of those words or whatever, but it seems like they'll just slap "ColecoVision" on anything that they put out at this point. Pretty silly.. :/

 

Hmmm. ColecoVision won't run GBA games unless they have included a GBA module.

Edited by Serguei2
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The coleco brand never had much value even in the 1980s; that's why nobody bought it during their bankruptcy sale. Technically, Hasbro aquired the coleco brand name along with the toy lines they bought; did they actually use the name? And it's not even known what became of the colecovision ip. Coleco's videogames (and table tops) required additional licensing which were generally more valuable than the coleco name. Would you buy something just because it said Atari (some would); more would likely buy something that played Asteroids, Centipede, or Missile Command. And that's the difference between Coleco/RWB and others. Regardless of the brand value Coleco/RWB has no video game IP.

 

Wouldn't these minicades be more practical as handhelds. Would it sell less if it didn't have the old tabletop form factor?

 

You are talking about ColecoVision brand name 5 years post crash and without any context. Coleco was half a decade out the video game business at that point. Japanese game companies had already succesfully taken over the console market in the US under their own brand names. Hasbro didn't use the Coleco brand name, because why would they use it in conjunction with the Coleco assets they purchased instead of their own? Hasbro wasn't interested in video game hardware manufacture, so of course they weren't interested in the ColecoVision IP. But, nobody had to coax them into placing a $95 million on Coleco's assets and name ($195 million today). After Coleco offered Hasbro a merger proposal at the January 89' New York Toy Fair, a Senior Executive at Hasbro went around Coleco's back to speak directly to the bankruptcy attorney about buying Coleco outright instead of giving them a chance to emerge from bankruptcy. The most important asset Hasbro wanted from Coleco was the rights to distribute the Cabbage Patch Dolls, which by purchasing Coleco they were able to secure the rights from 89' to 94'. Hasbro was primarily interested in Coleco's toys (Cabbage Patch Dolls) and games divisions. Hasbro to this day still owns the rights to manufacture "Scrabble" in the U.S. and Canada due to their purchase of Coleco in 89'. Hasbro didn't have to buy the Coleco name as part of the assets purchase though. They chose to do so rather than leave a toy competitor's brand name on the open market. It would be stupid for Hasbro to market the Cabbage Patch dolls, Scrabble, and other Coleco assets as "by Coleco" instead of making sure everyone thought of Hasbro when seeing those products on store shelves. That doesn't mean the name Coleco had no value, it means Hasbro thought it had enough value to want to keep any one else from using it in competition against them while at the same time not wanting to dilute the value of their own brand by keeping Coleco's name alive within their own product line.

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Downland1983 makes a very good point, buying the brand and removing it from the market. However the value placed on the brand is speculation. Hasbro did the same thing with Monopoly and Parker Brothers. Interestingly, Hasbro revived the PB brand a couple of years ago. Somehow they kept PB but not coleco.

 

Coleco had no videogame hardware IP. It was from texas instruments which nintendo and sega as well as japanese msx computers based their graphics technologies on. And coleco's video game software ip were mostly handcuffed by third party licenses. Coleco abandoned video games in 1985, one year earlier Mattel was able to sell its video games business for $20M.

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Downland1983 makes a very good point, buying the brand and removing it from the market. However the value placed on the brand is speculation. Hasbro did the same thing with Monopoly and Parker Brothers. Interestingly, Hasbro revived the PB brand a couple of years ago. Somehow they kept PB but not coleco.

 

Coleco had no videogame hardware IP. It was from texas instruments which nintendo and sega as well as japanese msx computers based their graphics technologies on. And coleco's video game software ip were mostly handcuffed by third party licenses. Coleco abandoned video games in 1985, one year earlier Mattel was able to sell its video games business for $20M.

 

Actually, Nintendo engineers were well aware of the ColecoVision and greatly impressed by it during the early development stages of the Famicom (which would go on to become the industry dominating NES). According to Nintendo's own devs, the ColecoVision was "a huge influence" on Famicom development.

 

"During the Famicom’s development, Nintendo was sharply aware of one product in particular. This was the ColecoVision belonging to an American firm called Coleco. (Fig. 1) Coleco was a toy manufacturer that produced items such as a portable game console that incorporated fluorescent display tubes. At the time, the Atari 2600 was a hit in North America. (Fig. 2) ColecoVision was developed by Coleco in order to compete with it.

Just before Nintendo started work on the Famicom, Coleco employees visited Nintendo with a prototype ColecoVision in tow. R&D2’s engineers were shocked at seeing smoothly animated graphics for the first time.

Takao Sawano (presently deputy section chief of Nintendo Entertainment Analysis & Development Division 1), a member of the development team and one of the people in charge of software development, brought the ColecoVision home and got his parents to play. Their response was overwhelmingly positive.

Sawano joined Nintendo in 1972 and, together with Uemura, participated in the development of games that utilized specialized LSI chips as part of R&D2. He was then recruited to R&D1, who had their hands full with developing the Game & Watch. However, he returned to Uemura’s side for the Famicom development project.

Sawano’s participation had a significant impact on the Famicom’s specifications. It was he that proposed the D-pad on the controller.

It is often said that the Famicom was modeled on the Atari 2600. Certainly, without Atari‘s success, it’s entirely possible that Nintendo would not have taken the plunge with the development of a domestic game console. However, Uemura states that it was the ColecoVision that technologically spurred him and the ColecoVision he had in mind when considering the image of the product."

https://www.glitterberri.com/developer-interviews/how-the-famicom-was-born/deciding-on-the-specs/

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Okay but the graphics chip in the colecovision that the japanese liked so much was the texas instruments tms9918.

 

I was just questioning how much the coleco name adds to the minicades. Are rainbow brite fans more likely to buy it because of it. Does the form factor help or hurt. Would people who owned or wanted a coleco table top pacman in 1982 buy these things because of the form factor or coleco name.

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Looks like they really cheaped out on shipping materials, quite a few complaints on the KS site. But it also seems like for every complaint, somebody else is quite happy. With a succesful KS campaign behind him you'd think he keep pressing the retro side of things...if all he wants to do is put already existing games in those shells, there's quite a few properties he could potentially get. But for me the bottom line is that neither of these two games had anything to do with the Coleco I remember, so other than the plastic shells, these are just novelties.

 

Looks like not many here at AA picked these up, or maybe nobody felt like doing a review other than the recent one in the previous page.

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Looks like not many here at AA picked these up, or maybe nobody felt like doing a review other than the recent one in the previous page.

 

I really wanted them...or at least wanted to want them. Especially the Rainbow Brite handheld. But the company's track record had me skeptical and thus ended up waiting to see how the final product turned out rather than to be sorry for spending so much on a piece of junk. I'm kinda kicking myself now, especially since it looks like there won't be any additional produced for the open market.

 

A perfect opportunity would be a handheld Cabbage Patch Kids, but sadly that won't happen since Hasbro owns the CPK license.

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Ya see how he tosses a PDF on the site in another deliberate attempt to try and legitimize his claim to the Colecovision logo which has no legitimate standing. The guy's as pathetic as a stray dog pissing on your fence post trying to mark his territory.

Why is this mini arcade ColecoVision, I have no idea. Are the windows he sells ColecoVision, too?

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