How did Commodore go to market in your locale?

[giantclam]

I was searching for an old Australian teevee ad (Mrs Marsh, Colgate, "But mummy, the tooth is crying!" ....bounty offered =), and I came across this, presented by the Valvoline toting John Laws, and I realized how 'stark' the marketing campaign here in AU was.

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Did C= carry on the same where you live?

[dreadnought]

I grew up in Poland. Here, behind the Iron Curtain, it was a bit of parallel universe and there were no official shops with rotten capitalist machinery. You could still but the machines on second hand market or in some individual places. Later on, Baltona, which was a kind of duty-free operation with a chain of shops started selling Commodore 64.

This is an ad for Commodore from 1990. Looks llike it was made on Amiga

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[Dunny]

Don't recall seeing any ads for any computer (barring the original Spectrum+ ad) in the UK. Everything I knew about the Amiga was from the magazines.

[TuRRIcaNEd]

Originally Posted by Dunny

Don't recall seeing any ads for any computer (barring the original Spectrum+ ad) in the UK. Everything I knew about the Amiga was from the magazines.

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That one stuck in my mind...

[StevenJGore]

I don't remember any TV adverts here in the UK, it was all word-of-mouth in the school playground. I remember newspaper adverts for Currys and Dixons having Amigas in them, but that was about it. Also, I have fond memories of seeing all the Amiga and Atari magazines placed quite prominently in WH Smiths, etc. Sigh, those were the days!

[demether]

Personaly I bought my first amiga in 1992, in a small local computer store, it was running Pang in demo mode. Great memories.

[Snoopy1234]

I recall some promo material in APC (Australian Personal Computer) at that time but have no memory of TV advertising locally. It may have been Myer, Angus & Robinson or Fitzgeralds (Grace Bros) that distributed the Amiga 1000 when it was released in Tasmania.

[a/b]

Hyped up (rightfully so) by enthusiasts in local magazines, and then the people smuggling their hardware into the country to dodge exorbitant taxes.

[Jope]

They went all in.

It was the liberator!
https://tietokonesivut.kasettilameri...os_pr10b83.jpg

Also it was the computer of the republic! (back then many things were "of the republic" in .fi so they decided to own that for the computers. :-)
https://tietokonesivut.kasettilameri...nos_mb1185.jpg

[Zak]

Here in Germany, the only TV commercial that I remember was for the Commodore Amiga CD³² in early 90's. It's not available on YouTube, I didn't find it. It showed a quick glimpse to a video game, where a spaceship was flying in the middle of the screen, in a view perspective from behind it, through a kind of tunnel, that kind of tunnel effect that you see in AGA demos very often. There is certainly technically correct terms for this. I don't remember the game name. Was it something with "M"?

[Dunny]

Originally Posted by StevenJGore

I don't remember any TV adverts here in the UK, it was all word-of-mouth in the school playground. I remember newspaper adverts for Currys and Dixons having Amigas in them, but that was about it. Also, I have fond memories of seeing all the Amiga and Atari magazines placed quite prominently in WH Smiths, etc. Sigh, those were the days!

We lived in Kent. I'd seen a pull-out special in Crash! magazine (had a +2 speccy at the time) and I was blown away - after that it seemed to be in all the mags.

Of course I had literally zero cash, so my mates at school said I should get a Master System instead of an Amiga as they were for poor people.

Talked to my Step-dad who had a EUR launch-model A1000 in the loft, but I'd need to buy it off him rather than just give it to me. Did four or five paper rounds over the summer to save £360 he wanted for it. Got it, loved it, kept it until I was surprised with a new A1200 by my other half in '95.

But until the mags really got going there was literally zero publicity in the UK.

[lionagony]

Originally Posted by Zak

Here in Germany, the only TV commercial that I remember was for the Commodore Amiga CD³² in early 90's. It's not available on YouTube, I didn't find it. It showed a quick glimpse to a video game, where a spaceship was flying in the middle of the screen, in a view perspective from behind it, through a kind of tunnel, that kind of tunnel effect that you see in AGA demos very often. There is certainly technically correct terms for this. I don't remember the game name. Was it something with "M"?

Was it Microcosm?

[CCRider]

Amigas were, erm, "unofficially" imported to Brazil since the beginning, but much more so from the A500 era onwards.

Commodore arrived here officially more than too late for the party, in late-1992 or early-1993, through a local company (PCI Componentes Eletrônicos da Amazônia or something like it). Seems more like they were dumping surplus production over here, and never made a dent on the market, since it was absurdly expensive.

That didn't stop them to run this advert on the major national weekly magazines of the time:

[gimbal]

I don't actually remember ever seeing a Commodore commercial to be honest. Strange because they were pretty popular in the Netherlands.

[Estrayk]

Spain TV commercial

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[Bruce Abbott]

Amiga 500 (Commodore, New Zealand, 1987)
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1980s TV ad from New Zealand for the Commodore Amiga 500 with Kylie Mole (character in Australian TV show The Comedy Company). I remember this one!
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New Zealand Amiga 500 advert by Dick Smith Electronics in 1992.
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[Zak]

Originally Posted by lionagony

Was it Microcosm?

That seems to be correct.

[Megalomaniac]

Here in the UK I vaguely remember the TV ads with Another World footage and the song 'Sunshine on a Rainy Day' for Christmas 1991, and a CD32 ad pushing it (rightly or wrongly) as "twice as fast, twice as powerful, as anything he'd ever thought possible", but overall there was less TV advertising than you'd think. Both very much based around the capabilities of the hardware, both in numbers terms and "look at this game" visual terms. Maybe there was more when the system was newer? Or maybe more in the grown-up press? I'm not sure computer advertising was that prevalent on TV, though I was amused when I looked up the infamous moment of comedy magician Tommy Cooper suffering a fatal heart attack on live TV (April 1984) on YouTube, and when they panicking cut to an ad break the first ad shown was for the then-brand-new Amstrad CPC.

[d4rk3lf]

I grew up under heavy sanctions on my country (Serbia), and we had lot's of wars in the 90's, and I can't really recall any TV commercial about Commodore (64) or Amiga.
Still, these were very very popular machines, and computer magazines praised them, and gave reviews of all new games and apps at the time, so we kids were informed quite well, what's going on "outside".

The funny thing is, even if you wanted to purchase some game, it was illegal, because you're under sanctions.
Not that I justify piracy, but if it was not present, I couldn't enjoy many titles, and prettiest moments of my childhood.

[giantclam]

Thanks for replies so far.... interesting there's no 'common theme'...yet another C= thang I guess =)