1983 Coleco Catalog: Tabletop Arcade Games, G.I. Joe, and More

Coleco 1983-1

Coleco 1983-2

Coleco 1983-3

Coleco 1983-4

Coleco 1983-5

Coleco 1983-6

Coleco 1983-7

Coleco 1983-8

Coleco 1983-9

Coleco 1983-10

Select pages only. I didn’t remember how unwaveringly creepy the Cabbage Patch Kids were/are until the catalog jogged my memory. The “anatomy” lesson seals the deal.

The Coleco tabletop arcade games were at the top of every kid’s holy grail list. Other handhelds were good, even great, but these looked like actual cabinets and you could take them anywhere, especially to school where the other kids (and some adults) followed you around like so many hungry puppy dogs. It didn’t really matter that the screen was so tiny—the idea that you had a real arcade at your fingertips melted the logic circuits. We had some sort of fundraising drive at my elementary school in ’82, and the grand prize was either the Coleco Galaxian or Pac-Man. The number of chocolate bars one had to sell to get the thing was impossibly large, but I have very tangible memories of knocking on doors around the neighborhood all day long with dreams of that little machine dancing in my head. It was not to be, but I did get my beloved Atari 800 shortly thereafter.

The E.T. Rider? No, Coleco. No.

The G.I. Joe Arctic Recon Patrol? Yes. Very much yes.

4 Responses to “1983 Coleco Catalog: Tabletop Arcade Games, G.I. Joe, and More”


  1. 1 Tom Beiter November 16, 2014 at 10:04 pm

    The ET Rider? Thanks for the nightmares, Coleco.

  2. 2 mikemonaco November 17, 2014 at 2:09 pm

    There must be some lost pages with a full dissection or autopsy of the CBK.


  1. 1 Christmas Morning, 1982: G.I. Joe and Tron | 2 Warps to Neptune Trackback on December 18, 2014 at 3:42 pm
  2. 2 Dungeons & Dragons Power Cycle (Coleco, 1984) | 2 Warps to Neptune Trackback on January 20, 2015 at 4:30 pm

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s




Pages

Archives

Categories

Donate Button

Join 1,103 other subscribers

%d bloggers like this: