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Gold Astrocade Cartridge Labels?


sixersfan105

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I came across this image on the side of an Astrocade console box and it struck me as odd. Did Astrocade cartridge labels ever have the Astrocade logo with a gold background, as depicted in the picture? I've never come across any, so curious as to how this image could manage to get the green light for placement on the console box!

DBF8D0D4-FED5-4600-BCE3-CE172D3B05BB.jpeg

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10 hours ago, sixersfan105 said:

Did Astrocade cartridge labels ever have the Astrocade logo with a gold background, as depicted in the picture?

 

There are four released variants of the Bally Arcade/Astrocade plastic dust cover for the console.  Plus, there are two additional variations used in advertising that were never released.  All six of the dust covers are mentioned, with pictures, on Lance Squire's html Astrocade FAQ:

 

http://glankonian.com/lance/Unit%20Labels.html

 

You've got a good eye for noticing details.  Little things like this always slip by me.  Specifically, Lance's site says this about the variant that you spotted, "Seen on Boxes and ads. Currently believed to not exist outside of the Astrocade marketing department."

 

Adam

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9 minutes ago, sixersfan105 said:

@ballyalley yes I've come across Lance's page on the dust cover variants of the console, but I'm referring to the game cartridges themselves. Any idea about that?

Same thing, in house mock up at some point, this was during the astrovision / astrocade takeover / transition.  Before it became Astrocade it was going to be Astro-Arcade, there's advertising for that as well, and even a commercial.  Then they had to change over to astrocade and change the company name as well.  It was the 80's after all.  If you go back on the systems history you'll find evidence of even more oddities and mash ups that never were or might have been.

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  • 4 weeks later...
On 12/9/2020 at 1:15 AM, sixersfan105 said:

I came across this image on the side of an Astrocade console box and it struck me as odd. Did Astrocade cartridge labels ever have the Astrocade logo with a gold background, as depicted in the picture? I've never come across any, so curious as to how this image could manage to get the green light for placement on the console box!

 

This is all supposition.   If you search ebay or even your own boxed collection, Astrocade labels were placed over Bally logos on boxes.  My supposition is that marketing assumed the same practice would be used on the actual game labels themselves and indeed the box art in the first post does look like the same gold foil labels as used on the sides of boxes. In practice I have not seen original gold labelled carts.

 

The upper left box in the picture below is a printed "Astrocade" box but the one below it is an earlier Bally box with a gold Astrocade sticker over the logo.  The sides and end flaps would also have smaller Astrocade foil logos covering the Bally logos.

 

s-l1600.jpg

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@bah right right I'm familiar with the Astrocade stickers over top of the backstock of Bally boxes that remained after the one-year transition from Bally to Astrovision ended (I had read that Astrovision had one year to use the Bally name). Obviously they didn't need to do the same to the cart labels because it was cheap enough to print fresh cart labels (plus they might not have had any excess cart stock; who knows). 
 

I agree that it was likely a case of marketing expecting something that never came to be. 

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The boxes were generic.  A white sticker on the side defined what game was inside and the manual shows through with the artwork and title.  It makes sense that you bought 50k boxes at a time and then labeled carts and stuffed the boxes to fill orders.  That means you would have a lot of money tied up in boxes where the logo had to be covered but the games themselves were probably just parts in bins with the label put on after assembly and testing.  So when the name change happened, relatively few carts were in process and the label stocks were changed over in a timely manner, never requiring a logo fix to the cart.

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