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Via WorthPoint
The idea of robots literally eating your precious and portable files must have been far more terrifying than it was exciting that Maxell’s 5.25” disks were on some Michelin-rated menu of computer hardware.
That could be oil in their glasses but it sure looks like white wine. And what, they’re going to season their floppy appetizer with table salt? Pick a lane, Maxell!
The ad above was a massive departure from Maxell’s previous “Gold Standard” campaigns, those with their rainbow prisms and racecar disks . The restaurant ad seems like it had a lot more money behind it too, showing up in several issues of PC Mag, Personal Computer, and Byte throughout 1985 and 1986. It is not hard to find online or in print, whether on eBay, WorthPoint, or in a frame at a Value Village in Ottawa.
Despite its enduring popularity, this was actually the worst showing of what would go on to be a campaign so good that it wound up in a museum. Because, yes, Maxell’s dollar-store C-3PO was, in fact, a life-size prop. And far from lonely.
Byte Nov 1986 via Vintage Apple
This concept makes so much more sense than robot date night! And the gilded portrait of their desk-bound predecessor on a pedestal? The BS corporate graph? I wouldn’t change a thing. Except the glaring mistake of putting “3½” microdisk” in the copy when there are 5¼” floppies on the table. I never stopped to consider what scale these sets were, though, until I found a thread on r/vintagecomputing about the spread.
“I don’t think this is a mass-produced toy…Having multiple life-sized copies is even less likely,” u/mindbleach commented . “I expect this is a photo manipulation.” Even if, as suggested, there was only one of the silver robots, snapped in six photos layered over each other, two full-sized robots (with articulating fingers!) are extremely cool. Just look at what the size allowed them to do with lighting and detail in ad number three:
MacWorld Dec 1987 via Vintage Apple
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