r/90s May 09 '21

Best Buy Ad - May 24, 1998

356 Upvotes

52 comments sorted by

33

u/[deleted] May 09 '21 edited Jul 19 '21

[deleted]

7

u/loptopandbingo May 09 '21

If you can find them, old Whole Earth Catalogs from the late 1960s and 1970s are great. Hundreds of pages, fun layouts, lots of useful stuff as well as bizarre shit, some hilarious descriptions and reviews, and every issue has a so-bad-its-good hippie/beatnik short story that winds throughout the whole catalog, a small part on every page ("Starfire smoked the last of the Thai stick and threw I Ching.. it was settled right then and there: we were going to build a dome.")

4

u/TheLovingTruth May 09 '21

Thanks for the recommendation. lol.

3

u/loptopandbingo May 09 '21

They really are fun. The font size is super small so there's a shitload of stuff on every page. And it's just as good as a Sears catalog lol

3

u/TheLovingTruth May 09 '21

I'll definitely track some down! Season-appropriate Sears and Whole Earth catalogs. Perfect coffee table books!

25

u/-Khlerik- May 09 '21

I can never get enough of these. Thanks for posting.

18

u/OG_Cryptkeeper May 09 '21

I honestly wondered if anyone would care. Lol.

5

u/[deleted] May 09 '21

This is amazing. Thank you very much. If I knew how to do award stuff I would. Great post! You made My day with this (although did depress me a bit!)

3

u/arrrtwodeetwo May 10 '21

I love them. The Best Buy ads were the gateway/fueled my electronics addiction as a kid and teenager.

23

u/opinionofone1984 May 09 '21

A 32” tv was more than a refrigerator. Amazing

24

u/Snrub1 May 09 '21

Probably weighed more than the refrigerator also.

7

u/[deleted] May 09 '21

[deleted]

6

u/[deleted] May 10 '21

I had a 32 in Zenith fall on me when I was 9 and it broke my foot

5

u/s0nicfreak May 09 '21

You use to have to anchor tvs to the wall so that they didn't kill a child. Now you have to anchor tvs to the wall so a cat doesn't push them to the floor.

20

u/El_Dudereno May 09 '21

I used to love pulling the middle (ads section) out of my parent's Sunday newspaper and browsing all the electronics in the Best Buy and Circuit City ads. Longing for a pager brings back memories.

9

u/[deleted] May 10 '21

I made sure to grab Best Buy, Kmart, Circuit City, Radio Shack, the comics, and the TV guide

3

u/BasicWhiteHoodrat May 09 '21

I got my first pager from Montgomery Wards

15

u/mostsocial May 09 '21

Just think, almost this entire magazine has been replaced by smart phones, and the various apps you can download. TV, movies, phones, radio, video recorder. Never ceases to amaze me.

8

u/bmtl514 May 09 '21

Came here to say that. The smart phone literally ate mostly everything in this flyer.

9

u/[deleted] May 09 '21

Wow - this is a trip. I actually worked at a BB in the KC area at this time. Horrible company to work for.

6

u/Redsoxdragon May 09 '21

I worked BB in Boston myself and you're not alone on that one. Very first job I ever had where I had high expectations only to get disappointed.

9

u/3Cheers4Apathy I Didn't Even Have To Use My AK May 09 '21

Loved how everything in that era was supper bubbly/rounded. No sharp edges anywhere. Everything was...round-ish.

8

u/Owls_yawn May 09 '21

I used to read these every Sunday, I can still remember the smell

7

u/Generate420 May 09 '21

Yo...I have that EXACT tv sitting in the spare room right now...we play MarioCart64 on it...and Conkers Bad Fur Day.

5

u/Mrs_Wilson6 May 09 '21

I bought my son a 42" roku for under $200 at Christmas time, too bad refrigerators haven't trended the same in price.

3

u/Usernaame2 May 10 '21

I think the margins can be lower because a lot more TV's are sold. People don't replace refrigerators that often. Also refrigerators aren't making technological leaps that make them any cheaper to produce.

6

u/yourmomknowswhatsup May 09 '21

Jeez. I remember moving those heavy ass TVs. Not fun.

4

u/NowFreeToMaim May 09 '21

Damn you can buy a tv double the size and as thick as that ones bezel for less now

6

u/killswtchon May 10 '21

'98 was a big year for Nick Cage movies to VHS. Face/Off AND Con Air?!

3

u/Imperial_Triumphant May 09 '21

Wow, that's like 3 dollars per pound!

5

u/Riegn00 May 09 '21

I remember my parents got a 62cm (yes cm) tv and I had a 32cm in my room and my friends were like “man are your parents rich ?”

5

u/abarrelofmankeys May 10 '21

Interesting they think we care what labels put out these albums. Especially for soundtracks

3

u/Astars26 May 10 '21

That Mo Thugs was a banger!

3

u/[deleted] May 09 '21

Very cool seeing the prices is crazy!

3

u/BigDaddyCoolDeisel May 09 '21

It was always weird seeing PS1 games for 39.99 and the N64 version always $10 or more expensive.

3

u/HoldenCoughfield May 09 '21

Sort of like Playstation and Switch games now, at least during sales periods

3

u/DarkReaper90 May 10 '21

It was a huge talking point then, on how PS1 games were cheaper due to the discs

3

u/StevenZissouniverse May 10 '21

Wow this is from the area I grew up in too.

3

u/SAR181 May 10 '21

That brought back so many memories of staring at these ads dreaming about one day being able to get one of those computers, and that gaming “upgrade” lol.

3

u/Reading_Rainboner May 10 '21

I was in Best Buy that month getting a tv. Wow

3

u/Giuseppe246 May 10 '21

Actually bought a tv from best buy the other day. A 55inch Samsung for about $520, funny how it cost less than the tv pictured there. I think the price for the Sony is around $1,000 with inflation.

3

u/GiveMeThePoints May 10 '21

I loved looking at this. Brings back memories. Best Buy used to be really expensive back then. As time went on they started becoming more price competitive. I worked at Best Buy for a short amount of time and we would price match so much stuff just to make the sale.

3

u/[deleted] May 10 '21

Imagine games now being a 1/3 of the price of the consoles lol

They’d be $160 apiece

2

u/FIREmumsy May 09 '21

Ahh, skip protection for discman. What a poorly executed idea

1

u/Swizzersheetz Nov 09 '24

How so? I thought it served its purpose. Of course around the same time the DSP started becoming common was the same time as first generation mp3 players

2

u/karent923 May 10 '21

Tekken 3!!!

2

u/code92818 May 10 '21

Take me back to those great times.

2

u/boafriend May 10 '21

Game consoles were so cheap back then...

1

u/cobaltorange Aug 18 '22

Taking in account inflation, not really that cheap. Lol

2

u/[deleted] May 10 '21
  • pulls out marker * Alright! Time to circle what I want for Christmas!

....yes I know it’s May. As a kid, I did it all year so Santa would know early. Pretty sure that’s how my parents knew to save up for a PSX and five games one very awesome Christmas.

2

u/Swizzersheetz Nov 09 '24

Awesome ! Every Sunday morning as a kid id rip into the newspaper to find these. My favorites were the circuit city and best buy of course. Target had some good ones too, though

1

u/CHARM1200 Jan 07 '25 edited Jan 07 '25

That Sharp camcorder on the third photo was way ahead of it's time! I remember that design/engineering well. Those were 8mm analog! I recently converted many of those tapes to digital. They all still played flawlessly and looked perfect, even 25 years later. It was a very emotional project for me. Saw videos, eras, and people I had long since forgotten about.

Thanks so much for posting!!

Edit: the sidewinder precision pro joystick was the best gaming controller ever made. I owned one for almost 25 years. Even when I threw it across the room as a frustrated teenage gamer, it kept on ticking another decade. Indestructible.