This makes me want to walk in and ask for a left-handed Anza brush and a nuclear polarity puller.

sharke

tlw
Tandy, Radio Shack's UK company, disappeared many years ago.

When they existed they mostly specialised in pretty low-quality stuff but not necessarily at low prices. The only thing they had going for them was that they were everywhere.

I was surprised they stayed in business as long as they did.

Tandy was actually started out of Texas in 1919 and was a leather retailer. They eventually acquired Radio Shack and then opened stores in Europe in the early 70's. I remember the Tandy stores and always associated them with Radio Shack because, well, everything they sold had the Radio Shack logo. Like the US stores, they were notorious for asking for your personal details with every purchase (probably because they wanted to mail you some crappy catalog). 
 
I remember the Tandy computers too. Nobody at school wanted one and they never had a chance in hell of competing with the Commodore 64 or ZX Spectrum. 

I worked for Tandy at the Corp Headquarters in Ft. Worth between 1986 and 1991.  that's where I met my wife!
In 2000, Tandy Corp split from the leather division and left them with the Tandy name, leaving the Corporate name as "Radio Shack"
 
I've had a couple of Tandy computers in those early days.  I disagree that they didn't stand a chance against Commodore 64 or ZX Spectrum because the Tandy's were IBM clones, which are still what we use today as Microsoft based PC's.  Tandy computers used IBM DOS or MS DOS, as did IBM.
 
the problem was that they failed at marketing correctly.  they tried to market the computers to every day people who, at the time most people didn't have computers and didn't make enough money to pay Tandy's prices.
 
Remember that in 1987 (the year these units were in the Radio Shack catalog) the family income was significantly lower than it is today.  $1700 was a major investment.  more than a refrigerator, stove, or any other appliance in the house.  a brand new car averaged $10k.
 

Beagle

sharke

tlw
Tandy, Radio Shack's UK company, disappeared many years ago.

When they existed they mostly specialised in pretty low-quality stuff but not necessarily at low prices. The only thing they had going for them was that they were everywhere.

I was surprised they stayed in business as long as they did.

Tandy was actually started out of Texas in 1919 and was a leather retailer. They eventually acquired Radio Shack and then opened stores in Europe in the early 70's. I remember the Tandy stores and always associated them with Radio Shack because, well, everything they sold had the Radio Shack logo. Like the US stores, they were notorious for asking for your personal details with every purchase (probably because they wanted to mail you some crappy catalog). 
 
I remember the Tandy computers too. Nobody at school wanted one and they never had a chance in hell of competing with the Commodore 64 or ZX Spectrum. 

I worked for Tandy at the Corp Headquarters in Ft. Worth between 1986 and 1991.  that's where I met my wife!
In 2000, Tandy Corp split from the leather division and left them with the Tandy name, leaving the Corporate name as "Radio Shack"
 
I've had a couple of Tandy computers in those early days.  I disagree that they didn't stand a chance against Commodore 64 or ZX Spectrum because the Tandy's were IBM clones, which are still what we use today as Microsoft based PC's.  Tandy computers used IBM DOS or MS DOS, as did IBM.
 
the problem was that they failed at marketing correctly.  they tried to market the computers to every day people who, at the time most people didn't have computers and didn't make enough money to pay Tandy's prices.
 
Remember that in 1987 (the year these units were in the Radio Shack catalog) the family income was significantly lower than it is today.  $1700 was a major investment.  more than a refrigerator, stove, or any other appliance in the house.  a brand new car averaged $10k.
 

 
Tandy did have an affordable home computer though, nothing like those souped up business machines. The TRS-80 was aimed at home users and retailed for around $400. This was in direct competition with machines like the C64 and ZX Spectrum. There were quite a few affordable home micros around in those days, and most of them were failures. If I recall, the TRS-80 suffered the same fate as computers like the Oric and the Dragon 32 - they just weren't sexy enough! Commodore and Sinclair really made the effort to market their micros as cool and fun, and they were sold in large retail stores, not just electronics stores like Radio Shack. Once you have that kind of marketing in action, it snowballs. The hippest young software developers of the time immediately saw an outlet for their talents and as a result the C64 and Spectrum had the coolest games available at the time. Hardly anyone was writing for the "other" machines and if they did, it was usually hurried conversions etc. If I recall, the market for ther TRS-80, Oric and the like was primarily parents who wanted their kids to learn about computers but didn't want them to get sucked into playing games. Doomed from the start!
 
Then of course you had the Amiga and Atari ST, and all bets were off.

The TRS-80 name covered a lot of ground as far back as 1977 when it was first introduced.  the $400 model wasn't available until early to mid '90's.  In 1988, the cheapest model they sold was $600.  (Not only am I remembering most of this, but I am referencing from a website which has their catalogs digitized for viewing:  http://www.radioshackcatalogs.com/computer.html )
 
but you and I agree that the marketing was what killed the TRS-80 and caused the Commodores and Sinclair (later the Timex-Sinclair) to skyrocket in sales.  as sales climbed, the overall price point lowered in order to provide more sales.
 
I owned a Commodore VIC-20 (and actually still have it!) and a Timex/Sinclair (still have it, too, but it doesn't work), long before I owned a Tandy 1000 (the 1000 series is where they actually started becoming affordable).
 
but the Tandy 1000 lead me into using it as a modern day PC (I bought one used in 1991).  I connected to the infant internet and played online ANSI games on BBS's.  using a 20MEG hard drive booting DOS!
 
Tandy HAD the potential to become a major player in the PC market.  but they marketed incorrectly got greedy from the good run that they did have.

Yea, I'll miss radio shack.  I didn't support them enough, but it is hard.  Just ordered some 1.5 ft. (1/2 meter for you metrics) XLR cables from Amazon today, and was upset it cost about $8 a piece since I've gotten better deals but want to plug my new WA Pultec via XLR.  At Radio Shack (or guitar Center) they would be $20+ and I would have had to order such shortys anyway.
 
Life moves on.  What I don't get is my wife ordering shoes etc. online.  How the hell are you supposed to know if they fit or how well?  And then she complains about the return problems.
 
@

Check this out:
 
Bill Gates' company Microsoft endorsed the Tandy 2000 series (business class) at a time when the Tandy 2000 just introduced the Intel 80186 based microprocessor.  At that same time, IBM was still using the Intel 8088 processor (which is actually an 8086 with a math coprocessor).
 

I think a lot of the appeal of the C64 was its dedicated sprite processing and its dedicated music chip, the SID. You could really do some amazing things sound-wise with that machine and it just had this awesome chunky analog sound. I got my introduction to things like ADSR envelopes and pulse width modulation by tinkering with it. So you had games with smooth arcade style graphics and amazing sound effects/music. As a home computer it was an absolute winner, nothing competed games wise at the time except maybe the Atari XL (which I owned as well). The great thing about those machines were they were so much easier to program compared to today's machines. 6502 assembly was very easy to learn and you had 9 year old whizz kids churning out stuff.

And since the C64 had no dedicated graphics or audio commands built into its BASIC language, kids were forced to learn a bit about machine code, if only through POKE statements. They learned how to squeeze the most out of every clock cycle and bit of memory - I still can't believe some of the games that managed to fit into 64K. They put many of today's sloppy programmers to shame.

I loved the c64. To get perspective on how revolutionary the Sound and graphics chip was for such an underpowered chip was, the Nintendo NES used the same chip. I learned tons about computers on commodore computers, particularly efficency.

Didn't they start out as a leather company?? I have gone there looking for a resistor now and then and speaker wire.
All they would have to do is bring back the Mach Loudspeaker series and a 70s style 120wpc stereo/receiver to go along with it... of course they would have to add a subwoofer... eh... but, heck I'd buy it. Well, the speakers anyway. I need a set of speakers for my Pioneer SX-1010 and they are hard to find without spending and arm and another arm. Those horns on top were COOL!!