If you like LGR, I'd recommend another, smaller channel that does such things like this, namely "The Nostalgia Mall" does a good job of similar content, as well as adding some (mostly) packard bell and retro abandoned mall-based content, but we are here for the computer stuff, so please give him a check! And I think, but I might check again if I am wrong, that channel may have did at one point did some tech/computer shopping ads in the past (like Packard Bell/Dells/etc.), with his commentaries being interesting a bit also...
Nice to know other people collect vintage retail ads. I saved a lot from 2016-2019 right at the tail end of my city's newspaper subscription before they stopped putting ads in it. I also saved cut-outs of cell phone ads from 2004-2008 (I collected them at the time) I still get the junk mail flyer that has a few ads in it but not an entire paper full. I work on sniffing out older ads from the 70s, 80s 90s but so difficult to find . My magnum opus I'm proud of is that I was very smart when I was 10 years old and had the foresight to save all the Game Crazy, EB Games, and Gamestop flyers that was sent to me and put them in a binder (been a game collector since 1998). I was stupid (being a kid of course) and hole-punched them for a 3 ring binder though which damaged them, but they are all still here.
Sometimes I'm completely awestruck at how much of a nerd I unavoidably am. A 25 minute video about a CompUSA flyer from 1999?? You bet I watched the whole thing! Twice!
And this is why the Sunday morning news papers were such a treat back then. Compusa, Best Buy, circuit city, American, a few video game stores. Sears, I can go on….
Yup I loved looking for the Fry’s Electronics ad. They had one every day in the paper. I used to go the break room during lunch while at work to check the daily sales and sometimes hit Fry’s on the way home.
I wanted an iMac as well. I even had a dream as a kid that I had just been handed an orange one from my family and I was upset that I was woken up out of that dream
Every time I see one of these ads for a tower PC from the late 90s, I am THROWN back into 12 year old me being so so hyped to get my first PC. I remember cutting the ad out and just looking at it for hours while it was shipping, which took a week. Longest week I've experienced. I don't think I've been so excited about anything since, and probably never will again. I'm glad I got to have that once in my life.
These store advertisements remind me of the old Scholastic Book Club mini-catalogs growing up. Expensive prices back then compared to what can be found today in comparison. Thanks for going through the pages.
I remember that back in 2020, an author whose book was featured in one of those catalogues ended up posting a link to a digital copy of the then-latest Scholastic Book Club catalogue on their Twitter page and I had a look at it, so I know just what you mean! Aaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!! 😄📚
As exciting and powerful technology is today, I will say the late 90s and early 2000s is probably the most exciting time for technology. Even though I was like 5-6 at the time, walking into a CompUSA and Best Buy was like walking into a theme park for me. My Parents once spent 349 dollars on a 64 MB RAM Upgrade for my dad's PowerBook G3 back then.
It really was a different era back then. I was in high school in the early 00s and can remember how it seemed how every new generation of computer would not only be faster than the last, but substantially so. For example, my first computer - an NEC Ready Series - took sometimes over a full minute to load an area in Fallout 1 and 2. When I upgraded to an HP Pavilion a couple years later, that load time went down to less than a second.
The leaps were bigger in the 90s. For example, you could have gotten a mid-range gaming rig in 2019 and still be able to play PC games coming out today. On the flip side a mid-range gaming pc bought in 1995 would've been ancient as fuck by 1999. Even a top of the line expensive gaming PC in 1995 (Around a 133 MHz processor & 16 MB Ram) wouldn't have met the minimum requirements for games like Unreal Tournament, Quake 3 Arena or Half-Life.
They turned me down. Told me I wasn't qualified. Turned my eyes away from retail and started looking for entry level IT work. Got picked up by a company I've been working for over 25 years. CompUSA went out of business only to come back as a garbage website while I'm still a systems admin. The reason I wasn't qualified, I couldn't NAME the 4 sections of an IP address. Yeah, I still can't. No one I know can. That's one of those dumb things you read in a book once then never remember because it matters to exactly 0 people.
My buddy and I are in Chicago after a 12 hour drive down from Ottawa, Canada for our first VCF Midwest! We are super excited! I look forward to saying hi tomorrow.
I miss CompUSA, I used to shop there a lot there at a mall back in the late 90s and early 2000s! I remember being blown away by the then-new iMac! It’s like seeing a brand new invention, those digital cameras were so cool!
I remember going to CompUSA with my parents at least a few times back when I was little, and my mom explaining to me that this was basically my stepdad's version of Toys R Us. Very sad it was replaced by a nursing school but the time I was old enough to really be into computers.
OMG, every time I watch one of your videos I am instantly transported back to the 1990s where I first started with computers and laptops and first gen digital cameras (with floppy disks hahaha) and early PDAs and all that jazz... Thanks as always for the nostalgia trip. ❤
I miss the 90's. Great time. Loved going to Babbage's, Electronic Boutique, and others. Trying to find computer games on sale in the bins. It's easier now, but then it was adventure.
This is hands down one of my favorite videos you've done! LOVED this retrospective on the adverts from those years. I was such a newbie to the computer scene, and though my interests were more into console gaming and toy collecting, this brought back a lot of memories!
I got my start in Computing back in 92 . The 90s were a exciting time for me and computers . I wish I had kept all my old machines . I still have my first computer that I built in 94 . 486 DX100 still runs perfectly ,just need a new case for it . I remember these CompUSA ads , Curcuit City , Frys Electronics ect.. Sad those stores are gone . I use to go to these places every pay day after I paid all my bills . Thanks for this one . I had a CompUSA branded computer back in the day . I love this old stuff ,a lot more fun than the modern stuff .
I worked at CompUSA from 1999 to 2007, those ads brought back so many memories. Still have my uniform and name tag. Another video you have done in a while and if you are in a bind is a LGR eats video.
I still had my black Tech Shop shirt and name tag until my daughter took my office as her bedroom and my stuff got shuffled off to god knows where. I think I had a couple red shirts too. I wish I still had them, good memories. I worked at store 288 in Totowa NJ
My cousin and I played around with 3D Home Architect a lot back around that time. I don't know which version it was, but that box art looks very familiar!
Oh man, 1999, what a year. I had an AMD K6-300 at the time and had constant issues with it. I wanted to replace it with a new Intel Pentium III that was all the hype that year, but being just a poor kid that wasn't happening. Until I got the chance to work a summer job at my dad's office. They had just switched from Lotus SmartSuite to Microsoft Office and had a network drive with thousands of documents that needed to be converted from the old format to the new one. They expected me to sit there for 6 weeks opening files one by one in Lotus and saving them as MS Office type files. That got old real quick, so when I got home I looked online for a batch converter tool and what do you know, I found one. So I put it on a floppy disk, brought it into the office the next day, let it run for an hour or so... and I was done haha. Didn't dare to tell anyone I "cheated", so I just kept quiet and collected my paycheck every week while pretending to be busy. By the end of summer I was able to buy a Pentium III 550 MHz that ran games much better than the K6 ever could!
The Y2K paranoia was SO real. I was less than 5 years old but I still remember my dad filling a room in our unfinished basement full of two liter bottles of water (I'm sure there were larger jugs, too). He was one of those types that turned out to be a prepper later on. 😂 great video as always, LGR!
I mean it in the best way when I say watching your videos is like listening to a dad take a walk down memory lane about all the exciting stuff that went down in the computer industry back then, and I'm all for it.
Boy, that SimCity 3000 on the first ad you showed. I bought that release. I still have the original disc, but I've also bought the Unlimited release on GOG a few years back. Good times. Edit: I had a flash of memory reminding me I bought my copy at Books-a-Million.
Best smelling store ever! Something about the plastics, burned into my brain. Spent much time playing MS Flight Sim and Midtown Madness demos while my sister had piano lessons each week across the parking lot ❤️
The trip to CompUSA in the 90's was always a great time! The Flyers in the Sunday Newspapers were like a Sears Christmas Wish book! The Fry's ones were even better!
When I bought something that was advertised in that week’s flyer I often put my copy of the flyer in the box as a record of where, how, and why I bought something.
I appreciate the work you do. You really take me down memory lane. Old Fry's ads would be a good one to do too along with Best Buy etc. I used to wait eagerly for the new weekly circular before the Amazon and pervasive online purchasing days.
Wow! Looking through the Sunday newspaper inserts is a crazy throwback. As a kid, I always looked forward going through all the toy and electronic store ads. This is definitely a series I would watch. Can't wait to see more!
I love seeing these old ads! I used to read them religiously around the same time period, also without the money to actually buy anything haha. Also used to just hang out at stores like CompUSA and others in the computer section and just look at stuff and mess around with the display models for hours… man memories…
that was the most nostalgic experience ive had in a long while. had me reminiscing of sunday afternoons at my grandmas, wish-listing with my cousin, eating lots of food with football on in the background. 12yo me wanted one of those windows ce palmtops so bad.. thanks for that and hope for more
Hah, wow, those CompUSAs in Troy, Novi, and Madison Heights in Michigan were very frequent haunts for me back in the day! One by home, one by work, and another kind of on the way home from work. 😅
I've never watched a video that has made both happy and sad as this. I was one of those crazy people that bought Falcon 4.0 and read the manual while at school when I should have been working.. Good times...
Had the foresight to save some of these as a kid, still have them and enjoy looking through them every now and then! takes me back to those sunday mornings in the late 90s!
I would always get SO excited for CompUSA fliers on Thanksgiving day. I would usually find nothing that was both "a thing I must have" and a substantial bargain, but the potential... oh, the potential... So exciting! Can't beat hanging with the family, full up on turkey and pie, and seeing ads for cakeboxes of store-brand CD-Rs at ridiculous prices.
I don't really care if you do a review or not, but it's always nice hearing your opinion on the various games you play. So I guess that's a yeah, give us a review. Or an overview of your experiences playing the game
I lived in Greensboro in '99 as well, and my elementary school (Jefferson, newly built and opened for the 99-00 school year) had a computer lab decked out with a couple dozen of those blue iMacs. Computer labs used to be a thing, and now a lot of districts give all their students their own laptops lolol. Impossible to imagine back then! And one of the techno-ish Ejays was also my first experience with music software! I believe my copy came from KB Toys lol. I later got a version of Magix from CompUSA as well, and then pirated copies of Fruity Loops and Reason. Thanks for the blast from the past for us fellow 90s kids!
Oh the nostalgia of these goodies, Looking at the tech back then makes me geek out back then even as a 1990s child... I remembered a lot of these machines in these stores back then!!! Thanks a million for the nostalgia trip, LGR!!! 😁
The tech in these ads were my life at the time. I took home a flyer from Staples when working there from 1997-2002. So foolishly tossed them out, of course, not knowing how nostalgic they would be. 😢
Like many others in the comments I really enjoyed this video, simple as it may be. I'm not from the US but I was very much into PC stuff at the time (and a few years older than you, actually got my first job, working with computers, in 98) so I recognize a lot of this stuff. Definitely a trip down memory lane!
I worked at CompUSA when these ads came out. We usually got them a week or two before they were released. I don’t get news papers anymore, but I do miss those flyers. When the original iMac came out Apple had a poor video on it that drove people away rather than sell the computer. I replaced it with the Star Wars Phantom Menace trailer on repeat and people would crowd around it.
I grew up In Elmhurst. Still glad to see that they still have community events. It's not just Elmhurst but the whole Chicagoland area is big on community events. As far as Elmhurst, the closest CompuUSA location was Downers Grove/Lombard. They moved from Butterfield and Finley to Butterfield and Highland to a new store location. Unfortunately they didn't last long after that. Their first location is a Brazilian steakhouse and their last location in Lombard is Dicks Sporting Goods. For the area, ElekTek and CompUSA were the got to computer stores. Then later Best Buy, Fry's, Microcenter. Best buy is not so much an enthusiast store like the others. Not to mention there was a PC King in Westmont not far from Microcenter. There were a few mom and pop locations around Chicago. Not mention for a short time we had a RadioShack Computer City in Oak Brook. That didn't last long either. And later on just like Tiger Direct stores I. Chicago didn't last long either.
I love the old school style videos just looking through old catalogues. Takes me back to when I first started binging all your videos. I personally would love to see a Starfield review seeing as your reviews are always spot on for me.
I absolutely love this. I often pause in your other videos when you show what the featured device would've cost in its day, showing a whole ad page. Thanks, man. 4:41 THIS, the 400MHz K6-2 Compaq in the picture, is how I played the Sims and Rollercoaster Tycoon and yes SC3K, and learned the wonderful Yamaha XG MIDI wavetable (included!) which helped define me musically. Mom was nice to let me use her computer all the time. She knew computers (programmer since '82) and kid me just knew '400MHz' was a good thing lol. Maybe i can still find that thing... Edit: 10:46 Didn't expect to see this! Hauppauge is where I grew up! Thank you for pronouncing it right lol
I still remember getting up early Sundays before church to snag the CompUSA sale ad and thoroughly review it. My brother and I got a lot of their "free or almost free" games after rebate. I bought my 2 Voodoo 2 12 Meg cards there.
I'd love a Starfield review, I hear lots of mixed things but nothing so effectively and methodically analysed like you do best. Enjoy your trip, drive safe!
Haven’t watched the video yet since I’m in line for coffee but I already know this’ll be great. I love old computer ads for the intense blast of nostalgia they provide
I probably have not seen one of these in 20+ years. I vividly remember looking at these every week from the newspaper. It was my main way of knowing when games came out and keeping up with what were the newest PC hardware was since I didn't have magazine subscriptions.
I remember in 1999 when the first 15" LCD monitors were available for about $1K, as you showed in this video. At the time while I wasn't poor and I wasn't rich, I did have a good job and some savings and really really really really wanted one, so I ran off to my favorite local CompUSA, a store where for several years I had spent a good portion of my disposable income, since building and upgrading computers was my hobby, and I bought one of these 15" LCD monitors and I remember it being $900 or $999... A huge chuck of change for the day. I excitedly brought it home, used it for a couple of days, and I don't think it was buyer's remorse but I was just underwhelmed at what I was looking at for the price, so I boxed it back up and brought it back to the store to return. What should have been a simple return ended up becoming a flat-out interrogation by the service desk who tried everything to deny the return. In the end they were unsuccessful and I got my money back.
I loved all 3 of the color iMac I’ve had from 1998-2004 and then I went for the eMac which had the general shape and form but was sadly only white.. after that the slim style iMac came out and it looked pretty much the same since then (apart from the material).. I miss colors! I remember vividly playing Unreal Tournament online all summer on my iMac! Loved that computer it was awesome!
Man! Those early digital cameras are why film stuck around so long! I can't imagine trying to use digital back then. In 1999, I was 15, so I was definitely shooting on a 35mm SLR, probs a Minolta.
Yep! When my family went on a trip to the US and Canada in 2001 and took me (as a toddler) along, my dad used a Kyocera Yashica 35mm camera with some kind of Fujifilm, especially during our visit to Disney's California Adventure and the Kodak-sponsored Journey into Imagination (fairly certain my parents used a mix of Fujifilm, Konica, and Kodak film, but I can't remember at this point or it may have been a false memory). I didn't know that was what those places were called until TH-cam recommended me videos from amusement park TH-camrs many years later as an adult.
Those original digital cameras didn’t even have screens. My dad got one from a work bonus. It was incredibly difficult to use and his computer had a hell of a time connecting to the damn thing. 😂 wish I still had it though! Things was stolen at Disney World :(.
Man this really brings me back memories bro. I mean been a kid in the 90's was magical I can remember getting all this computer magazine and been mesmerized by it, especially the at the time brand new iMac G3 I thought was the coolest computer do to it's style all in color case which reminds me of my Jungle Green N64 because of the different colors were available. Of course I really enjoy seeing the new hardware coming up mostly Windows 98 Pc from Compaq, Hp and Gateway. Man I can go on but yeah those were the times.
I started college in 2000 and shortly after that I "financed" (via my student loans) a K7 Barton laptop which iirc cost me CAD around $1800+tax. I got a lot of usage out of it during college but holy hell I remember the stress of buying it. Around 10 years later I remember picking up a pair of laptops for my nephews together for like $1200 or so. How prices changed....
I miss the transparent plastic on Nintendo consoles and Gameboys back then, never had myself but they looked so cool. Still have my trans blue PS2 controller though, and unlike my PS4 controller, no stick drift even though it's about 20 years old...
I used to pour over these things, checking every little detail of each machine against the next to find the one that will give you just a tiny bit more value. They’d always throw in a bunch of freebies to try and sweeten the deal like printers, scanners, software, etc. It was such a blast.
I used to check out these and best buy circulars as a kid back then. I was always hoping my parents (being as old fashioned as they were) would get me at least the cheapest emachines
These types of videos looking at old fliers and catalogs are my favorite. I remember so many of these, circling items that I wanted, and even how these smelled at the time.
Interestingly Putt-Putt Enters the Race wasn't a re-release, but the newest Humongous release at the time this catalog came out (game released 1/1/99) and featured the debut of Nancy Cartwright as the voice of Putt-Putt, replacing child actor Jason Ellefson.
Good memories. I had a Compaq K6-2 233 system in that same case from 1997 or so. It was slow and had a noisy Bigfoot hard drive. I also bought one of the K6 laptops from Compaq in 1999 just like the one in this ad. It was also slow. I loved it though.
I had that Pentium III HP Pavilion at 1:50 when I was in high school. My dad bought that combo for me from Comp USA, deskjet printer and all. I added a DVD drive and Voodoo 3 card to it. Thanks for another great trip down memory lane!
Keep in mind the prices from 1999 are lower then they would be today due to inflation. $100 in 1999 would be almost $200 today when adjusted for inflation, so just roughly double the prices in the ad to see what it would have felt like to buy those things back then
Yeah, a lot of that magic is missing these days, at least to me, since we've reached a point where all that tech has just become as common and natural and streamlined as walking or eating. Back then, it was new, newish, and evolving, whereas now it's pretty much homogeneous, but I have a feeling it will get just as exciting again, very soon. ❤
wow, turbo tax was $10? compared to the $100 ripoff it is now. love this video! wish there were more of these., not sure if anyone remembers, but back in the day CompUSA had crazy hot deals with their free after rebate stuff. i remember waiting in line outside a grand opening, and they were handing out tickets for those looking to get in on those items. they had scanner, webcam, mice, keyboards, surge protectors, air in a can, all free after rebate. i must have spent close to a thousand dollars and got every penny back.
Back then, the Turbo Tax disc was offline. You answered the questions and printed out your return, and mailed it to the IRS, just as if you did it by hand. Today, at least the $100 gives them the responsibility for errors if you’re audited. (They charge more if you want to web chat with a CPA.)
I hope you understand how much love there is behind 11k people jumping at the chance to hang out with you for a half hour while you look through old newspaper ads :)
You're one of the only people that can make a 25 minute video on decades-old shopping ads and not make it boring. Love this stuff man
Thanks!
If you like LGR, I'd recommend another, smaller channel that does such things like this, namely "The Nostalgia Mall" does a good job of similar content, as well as adding some (mostly) packard bell and retro abandoned mall-based content, but we are here for the computer stuff, so please give him a check!
And I think, but I might check again if I am wrong, that channel may have did at one point did some tech/computer shopping ads in the past (like Packard Bell/Dells/etc.), with his commentaries being interesting a bit also...
Nice to know other people collect vintage retail ads. I saved a lot from 2016-2019 right at the tail end of my city's newspaper subscription before they stopped putting ads in it. I also saved cut-outs of cell phone ads from 2004-2008 (I collected them at the time) I still get the junk mail flyer that has a few ads in it but not an entire paper full. I work on sniffing out older ads from the 70s, 80s 90s but so difficult to find .
My magnum opus I'm proud of is that I was very smart when I was 10 years old and had the foresight to save all the Game Crazy, EB Games, and Gamestop flyers that was sent to me and put them in a binder (been a game collector since 1998). I was stupid (being a kid of course) and hole-punched them for a 3 ring binder though which damaged them, but they are all still here.
Sometimes I'm completely awestruck at how much of a nerd I unavoidably am.
A 25 minute video about a CompUSA flyer from 1999?? You bet I watched the whole thing!
Twice!
I saved my Maltesers just for this video.
@@carltonleboss Maltesers ? What is that ? Some kind of alcoholic beverage ?
And this is why the Sunday morning news papers were such a treat back then. Compusa, Best Buy, circuit city, American, a few video game stores. Sears, I can go on….
Many Sunday papers today are the size of once was a daily paper.
Yup I loved looking for the Fry’s Electronics ad. They had one every day in the paper. I used to go the break room during lunch while at work to check the daily sales and sometimes hit Fry’s on the way home.
Exactly! I used to go through all the catalogs each Sunday before anything else. It was great for preparing X-Mas lists too.
Every Friday had a large 3 page Fry's insert in the LA Times.@@boostedmaniac
As a kid I wanted one of those colorful Apple computers so bad. They may have been just colored plastic, but it made them so unique.
I still want one right now.. everything seems grey or white nowadays
The only time I saw one in person was at my computer lab in college. Ironically they got all white ones 😂
I wanted an iMac as well. I even had a dream as a kid that I had just been handed an orange one from my family and I was upset that I was woken up out of that dream
@@RyanPancakesen.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMac
Overrated and super slow
They really did not spare any expense on printing. Damn those colors are poppin!
Twas a bygone age, when the value proposition was held equal to the profit margin.
It was dirt cheap. The paper was one grade above toilet paper.
@umeng2002 the paper was from west rock and it cost 200$ for 500 million sheets
@@thesmashtvnetwork 😂
Every time I see one of these ads for a tower PC from the late 90s, I am THROWN back into 12 year old me being so so hyped to get my first PC. I remember cutting the ad out and just looking at it for hours while it was shipping, which took a week. Longest week I've experienced.
I don't think I've been so excited about anything since, and probably never will again. I'm glad I got to have that once in my life.
I sincerely appreciate your enthusiasm. I was the only kid around that got excited for these Sunday ads. Thank you for this!
These store advertisements remind me of the old Scholastic Book Club mini-catalogs growing up. Expensive prices back then compared to what can be found today in comparison. Thanks for going through the pages.
I remember that back in 2020, an author whose book was featured in one of those catalogues ended up posting a link to a digital copy of the then-latest Scholastic Book Club catalogue on their Twitter page and I had a look at it, so I know just what you mean! Aaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!! 😄📚
I miss the scholastic book fairs from elementary and middle school, but for me that was 20 years ago...
@@jr2904man makes me feel old. Left school 21 years ago.
@@jr2904 Thirty years ago for me. But that does bring back some fun memories.
As exciting and powerful technology is today, I will say the late 90s and early 2000s is probably the most exciting time for technology. Even though I was like 5-6 at the time, walking into a CompUSA and Best Buy was like walking into a theme park for me. My Parents once spent 349 dollars on a 64 MB RAM Upgrade for my dad's PowerBook G3 back then.
It really was a different era back then. I was in high school in the early 00s and can remember how it seemed how every new generation of computer would not only be faster than the last, but substantially so. For example, my first computer - an NEC Ready Series - took sometimes over a full minute to load an area in Fallout 1 and 2. When I upgraded to an HP Pavilion a couple years later, that load time went down to less than a second.
The leaps were bigger in the 90s. For example, you could have gotten a mid-range gaming rig in 2019 and still be able to play PC games coming out today. On the flip side a mid-range gaming pc bought in 1995 would've been ancient as fuck by 1999. Even a top of the line expensive gaming PC in 1995 (Around a 133 MHz processor & 16 MB Ram) wouldn't have met the minimum requirements for games like Unreal Tournament, Quake 3 Arena or Half-Life.
I know I am starting to get old when retro adverts make me wistful for times that were and will never be again
Wow. Big nostalgia for me - I remember getting up extra early on Sunday mornings just to see what would be in the sale papers. It was fun.
This took me right back. I worked at CompUSA in 1998-2000 for all the transparent craziness.
Same. Store 747, Represent!
I miss CompUSA so much... It was such a candy store in my tween years...
@@IFixSAN I forget my store number but it was the Encinitas one
@@ebruddah Right???? I worked on the receiving dock, so I literally got my hands on every new thing first
They turned me down. Told me I wasn't qualified. Turned my eyes away from retail and started looking for entry level IT work. Got picked up by a company I've been working for over 25 years. CompUSA went out of business only to come back as a garbage website while I'm still a systems admin.
The reason I wasn't qualified, I couldn't NAME the 4 sections of an IP address. Yeah, I still can't. No one I know can. That's one of those dumb things you read in a book once then never remember because it matters to exactly 0 people.
My buddy and I are in Chicago after a 12 hour drive down from Ottawa, Canada for our first VCF Midwest! We are super excited! I look forward to saying hi tomorrow.
I miss CompUSA, I used to shop there a lot there at a mall back in the late 90s and early 2000s! I remember being blown away by the then-new iMac! It’s like seeing a brand new invention, those digital cameras were so cool!
I remember going to CompUSA with my parents at least a few times back when I was little, and my mom explaining to me that this was basically my stepdad's version of Toys R Us. Very sad it was replaced by a nursing school but the time I was old enough to really be into computers.
OMG, every time I watch one of your videos I am instantly transported back to the 1990s where I first started with computers and laptops and first gen digital cameras (with floppy disks hahaha) and early PDAs and all that jazz...
Thanks as always for the nostalgia trip. ❤
For me it was the 80s! TRS-80 in '79, C-64 in '82 and then my first PC around 1986. I eventually bought an 80 MEGABYTE hard drive for $359.99
Love these type of videos. Its like therapy and so relaxing thinking about those times
Absolutely
I miss the 90's. Great time. Loved going to Babbage's, Electronic Boutique, and others. Trying to find computer games on sale in the bins. It's easier now, but then it was adventure.
I loved going to the shows and finding the 2/3 off priced educators version of Corel and other large applications.
i spent 25 minutes watching Clint going over vintage flyers. time well spent man, good job.
This is hands down one of my favorite videos you've done! LOVED this retrospective on the adverts from those years. I was such a newbie to the computer scene, and though my interests were more into console gaming and toy collecting, this brought back a lot of memories!
Thank you, I’m glad you enjoyed!
I got my start in Computing back in 92 . The 90s were a exciting time for me and computers . I wish I had kept all my old machines . I still have my first computer that I built in 94 . 486 DX100 still runs perfectly ,just need a new case for it . I remember these CompUSA ads , Curcuit City , Frys Electronics ect.. Sad those stores are gone . I use to go to these places every pay day after I paid all my bills . Thanks for this one . I had a CompUSA branded computer back in the day . I love this old stuff ,a lot more fun than the modern stuff .
I worked at CompUSA from 1999 to 2007, those ads brought back so many memories. Still have my uniform and name tag. Another video you have done in a while and if you are in a bind is a LGR eats video.
I still had my black Tech Shop shirt and name tag until my daughter took my office as her bedroom and my stuff got shuffled off to god knows where. I think I had a couple red shirts too. I wish I still had them, good memories. I worked at store 288 in Totowa NJ
I love the shot of the people going to be there because I have quite a few of these people on my list of videos to watch as soon as they come out.
My cousin and I played around with 3D Home Architect a lot back around that time. I don't know which version it was, but that box art looks very familiar!
Oh man, 1999, what a year. I had an AMD K6-300 at the time and had constant issues with it. I wanted to replace it with a new Intel Pentium III that was all the hype that year, but being just a poor kid that wasn't happening.
Until I got the chance to work a summer job at my dad's office. They had just switched from Lotus SmartSuite to Microsoft Office and had a network drive with thousands of documents that needed to be converted from the old format to the new one. They expected me to sit there for 6 weeks opening files one by one in Lotus and saving them as MS Office type files.
That got old real quick, so when I got home I looked online for a batch converter tool and what do you know, I found one. So I put it on a floppy disk, brought it into the office the next day, let it run for an hour or so... and I was done haha.
Didn't dare to tell anyone I "cheated", so I just kept quiet and collected my paycheck every week while pretending to be busy. By the end of summer I was able to buy a Pentium III 550 MHz that ran games much better than the K6 ever could!
The Y2K paranoia was SO real. I was less than 5 years old but I still remember my dad filling a room in our unfinished basement full of two liter bottles of water (I'm sure there were larger jugs, too). He was one of those types that turned out to be a prepper later on. 😂 great video as always, LGR!
I mean it in the best way when I say watching your videos is like listening to a dad take a walk down memory lane about all the exciting stuff that went down in the computer industry back then, and I'm all for it.
Boy, that SimCity 3000 on the first ad you showed. I bought that release. I still have the original disc, but I've also bought the Unlimited release on GOG a few years back. Good times.
Edit: I had a flash of memory reminding me I bought my copy at Books-a-Million.
Best smelling store ever! Something about the plastics, burned into my brain. Spent much time playing MS Flight Sim and Midtown Madness demos while my sister had piano lessons each week across the parking lot ❤️
The trip to CompUSA in the 90's was always a great time! The Flyers in the Sunday Newspapers were like a Sears Christmas Wish book! The Fry's ones were even better!
When I bought something that was advertised in that week’s flyer I often put my copy of the flyer in the box as a record of where, how, and why I bought something.
I appreciate the work you do. You really take me down memory lane. Old Fry's ads would be a good one to do too along with Best Buy etc. I used to wait eagerly for the new weekly circular before the Amazon and pervasive online purchasing days.
Wow! Looking through the Sunday newspaper inserts is a crazy throwback. As a kid, I always looked forward going through all the toy and electronic store ads. This is definitely a series I would watch. Can't wait to see more!
LOL even the Target circular was awesome for console games... Print ads were the best and I miss my huge Sunday newspaper.
@@ebruddah heck yeah! Target, Kmart, KB Toys, Toys R Us, Nobody beats the Wiz. Probably took a good hour to go through them all page by page.
I love seeing these old ads! I used to read them religiously around the same time period, also without the money to actually buy anything haha. Also used to just hang out at stores like CompUSA and others in the computer section and just look at stuff and mess around with the display models for hours… man memories…
that was the most nostalgic experience ive had in a long while. had me reminiscing of sunday afternoons at my grandmas, wish-listing with my cousin, eating lots of food with football on in the background. 12yo me wanted one of those windows ce palmtops so bad.. thanks for that and hope for more
LOVE these videos!! So much nostalgia within those papers.
Hah, wow, those CompUSAs in Troy, Novi, and Madison Heights in Michigan were very frequent haunts for me back in the day! One by home, one by work, and another kind of on the way home from work. 😅
I noticed that too. Really fun to see those
it's been too long since you did one of these! always fun, please do more
I've never watched a video that has made both happy and sad as this. I was one of those crazy people that bought Falcon 4.0 and read the manual while at school when I should have been working.. Good times...
Had the foresight to save some of these as a kid, still have them and enjoy looking through them every now and then! takes me back to those sunday mornings in the late 90s!
Insert videos are the best. Thank you
I would always get SO excited for CompUSA fliers on Thanksgiving day. I would usually find nothing that was both "a thing I must have" and a substantial bargain, but the potential... oh, the potential... So exciting! Can't beat hanging with the family, full up on turkey and pie, and seeing ads for cakeboxes of store-brand CD-Rs at ridiculous prices.
Cool and fun little vid. Enjoy these sorts of things ever now and then.
I don't really care if you do a review or not, but it's always nice hearing your opinion on the various games you play.
So I guess that's a yeah, give us a review. Or an overview of your experiences playing the game
I lived in Greensboro in '99 as well, and my elementary school (Jefferson, newly built and opened for the 99-00 school year) had a computer lab decked out with a couple dozen of those blue iMacs. Computer labs used to be a thing, and now a lot of districts give all their students their own laptops lolol. Impossible to imagine back then!
And one of the techno-ish Ejays was also my first experience with music software! I believe my copy came from KB Toys lol. I later got a version of Magix from CompUSA as well, and then pirated copies of Fruity Loops and Reason. Thanks for the blast from the past for us fellow 90s kids!
The office I was working in at the time was like 1/2 mile from a CompUSA, I miss that store. Many "lunch" breaks were taken at that place.
Oh the nostalgia of these goodies, Looking at the tech back then makes me geek out back then even as a 1990s child...
I remembered a lot of these machines in these stores back then!!! Thanks a million for the nostalgia trip, LGR!!!
😁
I would definitely like a Starfield review from the LGR perspective.
seconded!
Agreed!
I third that. - Hopefully it's not a lazy game review. :p
Loved those weekly circulars! Always went strait to the games section of those, Walmart, best buy etc..
The tech in these ads were my life at the time. I took home a flyer from Staples when working there from 1997-2002. So foolishly tossed them out, of course, not knowing how nostalgic they would be. 😢
Like many others in the comments I really enjoyed this video, simple as it may be. I'm not from the US but I was very much into PC stuff at the time (and a few years older than you, actually got my first job, working with computers, in 98) so I recognize a lot of this stuff. Definitely a trip down memory lane!
The Franklin Rex Pro itself WAS a PCMCIA card. You could slide the PDA into a laptop.
If you could find one, that would be an interesting review.
Yep they were very neat, pop in laptop and sync stuff to it and pop it out and take the information with you.
I worked at CompUSA when these ads came out. We usually got them a week or two before they were released. I don’t get news papers anymore, but I do miss those flyers. When the original iMac came out Apple had a poor video on it that drove people away rather than sell the computer. I replaced it with the Star Wars Phantom Menace trailer on repeat and people would crowd around it.
I absolutely love these type of Retro Ad reviews.
I grew up In Elmhurst. Still glad to see that they still have community events. It's not just Elmhurst but the whole Chicagoland area is big on community events. As far as Elmhurst, the closest CompuUSA location was Downers Grove/Lombard. They moved from Butterfield and Finley to Butterfield and Highland to a new store location. Unfortunately they didn't last long after that. Their first location is a Brazilian steakhouse and their last location in Lombard is Dicks Sporting Goods. For the area, ElekTek and CompUSA were the got to computer stores. Then later Best Buy, Fry's, Microcenter. Best buy is not so much an enthusiast store like the others. Not to mention there was a PC King in Westmont not far from Microcenter. There were a few mom and pop locations around Chicago. Not mention for a short time we had a RadioShack Computer City in Oak Brook. That didn't last long either. And later on just like Tiger Direct stores I. Chicago didn't last long either.
Perfect content to get through the final hours of this workweek. 🎉
Thanks for this one Clint. I had a smile on the whole time. What a wonderful time for computing!
These are legitimately some of my favorite videos of yours. Love the nostalgia of looking through these old circulars.
I love the old school style videos just looking through old catalogues. Takes me back to when I first started binging all your videos. I personally would love to see a Starfield review seeing as your reviews are always spot on for me.
This is some major nostalgia! Completely forgot about these ads. Thanks for making this video and putting me back on memory road!
I absolutely love this. I often pause in your other videos when you show what the featured device would've cost in its day, showing a whole ad page. Thanks, man.
4:41 THIS, the 400MHz K6-2 Compaq in the picture, is how I played the Sims and Rollercoaster Tycoon and yes SC3K, and learned the wonderful Yamaha XG MIDI wavetable (included!) which helped define me musically. Mom was nice to let me use her computer all the time.
She knew computers (programmer since '82) and kid me just knew '400MHz' was a good thing lol. Maybe i can still find that thing...
Edit: 10:46 Didn't expect to see this! Hauppauge is where I grew up! Thank you for pronouncing it right lol
I still remember getting up early Sundays before church to snag the CompUSA sale ad and thoroughly review it. My brother and I got a lot of their "free or almost free" games after rebate. I bought my 2 Voodoo 2 12 Meg cards there.
I'd love a Starfield review, I hear lots of mixed things but nothing so effectively and methodically analysed like you do best. Enjoy your trip, drive safe!
Haven’t watched the video yet since I’m in line for coffee but I already know this’ll be great. I love old computer ads for the intense blast of nostalgia they provide
I probably have not seen one of these in 20+ years. I vividly remember looking at these every week from the newspaper. It was my main way of knowing when games came out and keeping up with what were the newest PC hardware was since I didn't have magazine subscriptions.
These ads and others from that time were always awesome. I miss them.
I remember in 1999 when the first 15" LCD monitors were available for about $1K, as you showed in this video. At the time while I wasn't poor and I wasn't rich, I did have a good job and some savings and really really really really wanted one, so I ran off to my favorite local CompUSA, a store where for several years I had spent a good portion of my disposable income, since building and upgrading computers was my hobby, and I bought one of these 15" LCD monitors and I remember it being $900 or $999... A huge chuck of change for the day. I excitedly brought it home, used it for a couple of days, and I don't think it was buyer's remorse but I was just underwhelmed at what I was looking at for the price, so I boxed it back up and brought it back to the store to return. What should have been a simple return ended up becoming a flat-out interrogation by the service desk who tried everything to deny the return. In the end they were unsuccessful and I got my money back.
I loved all 3 of the color iMac I’ve had from 1998-2004 and then I went for the eMac which had the general shape and form but was sadly only white.. after that the slim style iMac came out and it looked pretty much the same since then (apart from the material).. I miss colors! I remember vividly playing Unreal Tournament online all summer on my iMac! Loved that computer it was awesome!
This was a fun trip down memory lane. I would totally watch a Starfield review!
100% yes please on the Starfield review. I'd love to see your take on this game.
For the record, when I see you have a new video (and I have time) I click! If I don't have enough time, I wait and then click. I do love your stuff.
Man! Those early digital cameras are why film stuck around so long! I can't imagine trying to use digital back then. In 1999, I was 15, so I was definitely shooting on a 35mm SLR, probs a Minolta.
Yep! When my family went on a trip to the US and Canada in 2001 and took me (as a toddler) along, my dad used a Kyocera Yashica 35mm camera with some kind of Fujifilm, especially during our visit to Disney's California Adventure and the Kodak-sponsored Journey into Imagination (fairly certain my parents used a mix of Fujifilm, Konica, and Kodak film, but I can't remember at this point or it may have been a false memory). I didn't know that was what those places were called until TH-cam recommended me videos from amusement park TH-camrs many years later as an adult.
Those original digital cameras didn’t even have screens. My dad got one from a work bonus. It was incredibly difficult to use and his computer had a hell of a time connecting to the damn thing. 😂 wish I still had it though! Things was stolen at Disney World :(.
I got my first two PCs as a kid from CompUSA (an IBM Aptiva with a Pentium90 and an HP Pavilion with a 2.2GHz Pentium 4)...rest easy old friend.
Man this really brings me back memories bro. I mean been a kid in the 90's was magical I can remember getting all this computer magazine and been mesmerized by it, especially the at the time brand new iMac G3 I thought was the coolest computer do to it's style all in color case which reminds me of my Jungle Green N64 because of the different colors were available. Of course I really enjoy seeing the new hardware coming up mostly Windows 98 Pc from Compaq, Hp and Gateway. Man I can go on but yeah those were the times.
yep the 90's was magical time i miss the 90s sooo much
I started college in 2000 and shortly after that I "financed" (via my student loans) a K7 Barton laptop which iirc cost me CAD around $1800+tax. I got a lot of usage out of it during college but holy hell I remember the stress of buying it.
Around 10 years later I remember picking up a pair of laptops for my nephews together for like $1200 or so. How prices changed....
The crystal colors of 90's tech was the coolest thing growing up.
I miss the transparent plastic on Nintendo consoles and Gameboys back then, never had myself but they looked so cool. Still have my trans blue PS2 controller though, and unlike my PS4 controller, no stick drift even though it's about 20 years old...
@jr2904 I have a transparent purple N64 controller, and a transparent-glacier blue Gameboy Advance
Never apologize for this type of content. Your Toys R Us and Best Buy ad videos are some of my favorite videos of yours. Please do more.
You’re doing what many of us did 25 years ago- and now older, I rarely buy any hardware new due to the price depreciation over time shown here!
I love these kind of videos I watched someone flip through old Sears catalog from the 80s the other day
I started to laugh everytime you said "I have one of these" 😅. You have so many of these items in the catalog you probably forget about some of them
I was the creative director and webmaster for CompUSA. The good old days indeed -- thanks for showing the circulars --
For what it's worth, these are enjoyable nostalgia trip videos and I think they're a solid break in otherwise deep dive content. I dig it.
Lego Loco was awesome, I loved playing that. And, over on the other side of that section was the 3D Frogger game that I had too, also not bad!
I legit LOVE these old ad videos
I used to pour over these things, checking every little detail of each machine against the next to find the one that will give you just a tiny bit more value. They’d always throw in a bunch of freebies to try and sweeten the deal like printers, scanners, software, etc. It was such a blast.
I used to check out these and best buy circulars as a kid back then. I was always hoping my parents (being as old fashioned as they were) would get me at least the cheapest emachines
These types of videos looking at old fliers and catalogs are my favorite. I remember so many of these, circling items that I wanted, and even how these smelled at the time.
Interestingly Putt-Putt Enters the Race wasn't a re-release, but the newest Humongous release at the time this catalog came out (game released 1/1/99) and featured the debut of Nancy Cartwright as the voice of Putt-Putt, replacing child actor Jason Ellefson.
Good memories. I had a Compaq K6-2 233 system in that same case from 1997 or so. It was slow and had a noisy Bigfoot hard drive. I also bought one of the K6 laptops from Compaq in 1999 just like the one in this ad. It was also slow. I loved it though.
Working to be an Advertising Major so these catalogue/promotional insert videos combine about a hundred of my interests! Love this type of stuff.
I had that Pentium III HP Pavilion at 1:50 when I was in high school. My dad bought that combo for me from Comp USA, deskjet printer and all. I added a DVD drive and Voodoo 3 card to it. Thanks for another great trip down memory lane!
Keep in mind the prices from 1999 are lower then they would be today due to inflation. $100 in 1999 would be almost $200 today when adjusted for inflation, so just roughly double the prices in the ad to see what it would have felt like to buy those things back then
CompUSA was one of my go to computer stores back in the day. Thank you for this trip down nostalgia lane.
This is so fun to look at as well as incredibly depressing. We lived in an amazing time.
Yeah, a lot of that magic is missing these days, at least to me, since we've reached a point where all that tech has just become as common and natural and streamlined as walking or eating. Back then, it was new, newish, and evolving, whereas now it's pretty much homogeneous, but I have a feeling it will get just as exciting again, very soon. ❤
Bionic tech, the next great frontier
That's not what I remember from those times. Most people looked at those ads and saw all the stuff they couldn't afford.
Please do more of these! I'll be at the show looking at all manuals! So excited .
Nostalgia is a hell of a drug.
🤣 👍
I was nostalgic about the 80s 8-bit days in the 90s !!
Overdose nostalgia
I've enjoyed this two camera setup kind of video. I'd love to see more like this in the future
wow, turbo tax was $10? compared to the $100 ripoff it is now. love this video! wish there were more of these., not sure if anyone remembers, but back in the day CompUSA had crazy hot deals with their free after rebate stuff. i remember waiting in line outside a grand opening, and they were handing out tickets for those looking to get in on those items. they had scanner, webcam, mice, keyboards, surge protectors, air in a can, all free after rebate. i must have spent close to a thousand dollars and got every penny back.
Back then, the Turbo Tax disc was offline. You answered the questions and printed out your return, and mailed it to the IRS, just as if you did it by hand. Today, at least the $100 gives them the responsibility for errors if you’re audited. (They charge more if you want to web chat with a CPA.)
I hope you understand how much love there is behind 11k people jumping at the chance to hang out with you for a half hour while you look through old newspaper ads :)