Hideous Quasar Smokers Choice 1984 Color Television NASTY

The best was when a console TV like this would break down and not be worth the cost to fix nor the effort to move it out of the living room, so it became a stand for a newer TV sitting on top of it.

That tar crust is just flavor to a High Life man.

Back in 76 my mother worked a part-time job to save enough money to buy the predecessor to that set in the exact same cabinet. She was a big Jimmy Carter fan and purchased it to watch the inauguration in color. One week before the inauguration the set went out. We had used it for about 2 weeks. There was a bad batch of if integrated circuits and since this was the first quasar set produced after Motorola the parent company of Quasar sold to Matsushita. Needless to say she was quite upset and the quasar repair person showed up inauguration day and got the set working about 10 minutes after the inauguration was over. Now that being said the set from that point on did an exceptional job and really required no other maintenance other than dusting the inside out and replacing the channel selector knob. One day while we were watching it we heard a crash. I pulled the back off and the neck of the picture tube separated where it was joined to the bell. It took 16 or 17 years for that to manifest itself. Electrically it was a very well-built set. The flyback was in case in a tin can. It also had a ferro resonant power supply transformer. Everything was typical Japanese quality of the day. The set you have here is a victim of bean counters.

As an apprentice TV engineer for a Rental company in the UK I used to refurbish our sets. The smokers sets always took longer. We used a spray white foam cleaner on the cabinets and screens and watched it turn an amber color as it slid down the screen....nice.

Looks nostalgically beautiful to me, like the set my friend had and we'd play Nintendo on as kids. Cheap, yeah, but the styling feels comforting to me. Never realized there was so much plastic fakeness back then though.

Repeatedly kicking the TV set to get the vertical deflection working was the best part

Never did I ever expect someone to shout "Whose your Daddy?" while accosting a television set in an attempt to make it work. Classic stuff!

Coming from a PAL country, it's always interesting to see what tricks American TV manufacturers tried to pull to keep the tint just right. Each manufacturer had its own system of "Dynacolor" or "Chromatrue" or "Supracolor" or whatever for automatic tint adjustment.

As an '80s kid, I recognize this. It came from a Smoker's Den. That's were men smoked so much that they could inhale on their nasty sticks, lift their leg, and blow smoke out of their butt. It was also the family room. Your kid too young to smoke? We've got you covered with the family room! It's a smoke chamber guaranteed to make sure your kids get in on the action without puffing of a cigarette! They also make a portable smoke chamber called the family car where no one wore seat belts while you sat in you mother's lap while she smoked! Lots of people want to bring back those days...

In 1984 Italian grandmas loved this cabinet. These were placed in the room with plastic on the furniture that no one could sit in...

I can still very clearly remember the day when my great Aunts Silvertone console died and they could no longer get a wooden console TV from Sears. They asked us to check other places for them. They were very disappointed with the black JVC that we found and the black modern stand. It really did stand out like a terrible sore thumb in their very traditional old fashioned sitting room.

I know the type of person who would buy that set. I picture a grandmother type, with gnarled fingers, and a raspy smoker's voice sitting in an overstuffed brown recliner. And that Tv probably had a large doyly over it with various knickknacks on top. And no, you were not allowed to hook your "Nintendo" to it because that might mess it up, and gramma paid good money for that set! And it was always a "Nintendo" regardless of what game console it actually was.

I work on arcade games for a living. I've seen dirt and nicotine so thick on CRT's that you could barely see the picture through it, and circuit boards that looked like blankets because the dust was so thick on them. This TV is clean by comparison :-)

Secretly I believe you are mesmerized by the beauty and aroma of this set.

I remember those years, everybody sat around in front of the TV and smoked, ashtrays were full of cig butts. The big push to get people off cigarettes was just getting started. I was a electronics tech and every piece of equipment I worked on not only smelled of tobacco smoke but required a clean rag and wipe down the inside to remove the sticky yellow tar inside.

That would have fit quite nicely in my 1973 Fleetwood single-wide mobile home. Quit hating. 😂

That TV is worth millions, how lucky you are to own the Marlboro man's actual TV that's been in his home for the last 40 years until he passed away at the grand old age of 60

Shango seems to be taking the cheezy cabinet design personally. Keep it coming, that's why I come here! lol

One of my best friends, bought a Quasar identical to this one, brand new, in '84 or '85. It lasted for a few years, then died. He still had it years later, with a newer set sitting on top!

it was probably one of the best decisions of my life never to start smoking ...