Word: coleco
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Troubled Coleco is cashing in big on the year's hottest...
Perhaps America can survive only so long without losing its head over a new fad, and then something or other has to be seized upon, advertised, yearned for, bought and sold. Coleco Industries' surprised president, Arnold C. Greenberg, who manufactures the Cabbage Patch Kids, does not have much of an explanation for his stunning success either. His version: "The fact that the child can literally have a unique, loving, bonding experience separates it from other dolls." But Greenberg, who has been criticized for his extreme optimism, also likes to say: "We really create the market. We create the demand...
Quite a creation. Coleco, which introduced the Cabbage Patch Kids last February, expects to sell 2.5 million of them this year, which would be a record for any doll in its first year. Nobody knows how many more Coleco could have sold had it not been caught unprepared by its own success. The company says it is chartering planes to bring in 200,000 more dolls a week from factories in Hong Kong. And faced with a false-advertising charge by the consumer affairs department of New York's Nassau County, which accuses Coleco of "harassing" children by advertising...
...taste for extravagance. Among the most popular items are high-fashion clothes and high-tech gadgetry. Shoppers are buying Oriental rugs, videocassette recorders, fur-tipped sweaters, microwave ovens and lots of costume jewelry. In toy departments, traditional and huggable products are upstaging video games. This year's hits: Coleco's pudgy Cabbage Patch Kids (about $35) and Kenner's fuzzy Care Bears (about $23). Military toys like Hasbro's G.I. Joe have also made a comeback...
...hoopla notwithstanding, some experts who claim familiarity with the PCjr are unimpressed. They point out that the IBM machine has a relatively high price, in comparison with competitive products already on the market. The Coleco Adam, which was first shipped last month, includes a printer along with the computer and is available for less than $600. Commodore's hugely successful Commodore 64 has a base price of just $200. The Seybold Report on Professional Computing, a respected industry newsletter, describes the PCjr as "a surprisingly modest machine, embodying relatively little innovation...