Gateway 2000's hilariously bad ads in the 90s (Part II)
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Gateway 2000's hilariously bad ads in the 90s (Part II)
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Re: Gateway 2000's hilariously bad ads in the 90s (Part II)
#2[deleted]
Re: Gateway 2000's hilariously bad ads in the 90s (Part II)
#3As a young Midwestern nerd in the 90s, getting one of those cow boxes delivered to our home was better than Christmas. (Christmas happens every year!). Somehow I can still remember the new computer smell…
Re: Gateway 2000's hilariously bad ads in the 90s (Part II)
#4Hilariously good. Imo they worked on me. I can quote Gateway 4DX622 at $1899 OTOH of my head now. And it got me to read the whole thing.
Re: Gateway 2000's hilariously bad ads in the 90s (Part II)
#5> And you won’t get to brag that you own a computer from Iowa.
South Dakota. Gateway was HQ’d in North Sioux City, SD.
There is also a South Sioux City, NE, though to my knowledge no computer manufacturers have had a presence there.
My dad worked at Gateway in the mid-late ‘90s and early ‘00s. Employee perks were pretty decent for the time; for example, he could borrow a laptop to play with and learn on at home — we used this almost entirely to play games, since we had a hand-me-down 486 at the time. They would also give you a PC in agreement for continued employment for N years. We got a Pentium III 550 MHz screamer of a system, which was absolutely bonkers for my young self.
Re: Gateway 2000's hilariously bad ads in the 90s (Part II)
#6These ads feel like a mental cleanse compared to ads now, which are focus grouped (and now AI polished) until there is nothing left but soulless gray goo, devoid of any personality whatsoever. Nice to see color again on the You Got It, Baby ad.
Related: https://www.printmag.com/design-trends/flat-logos-with-alex-...
Re: Gateway 2000's hilariously bad ads in the 90s (Part II)
#7> And you won’t get to brag that you own a computer from Iowa. South Dakota. Gateway was HQ’d in North Sioux City, SD. There is also a South Sioux City, NE, though to my knowledge no computer manufacturers have had a presence there. My dad worked at Gateway in the mid-late ‘90s and early ‘00s. Employee perks were pretty decent for the time; for example, he could borrow a laptop to play with and learn on at home — we…
You're right! That was a not entirely clear enough reference to Gateway 2000's first ad, in 1987, which famously used the headline "Computers from Iowa?"
https://buttondown.com/suchbadtechads/archive/gateway-2000-p...
Re: Gateway 2000's hilariously bad ads in the 90s (Part II)
#8I had at least one Gateway 2000 desktop and several laptops over time. All but the last laptop were lovely machines. The last looked good on paper, but it was thicker and heavier than it should have been, and start losing keycaps fairly quickly.
Re: Gateway 2000's hilariously bad ads in the 90s (Part II)
#9I love that these ads had (cornball) personality.
Re: Gateway 2000's hilariously bad ads in the 90s (Part II)
#10> And you won’t get to brag that you own a computer from Iowa. South Dakota. Gateway was HQ’d in North Sioux City, SD. There is also a South Sioux City, NE, though to my knowledge no computer manufacturers have had a presence there. My dad worked at Gateway in the mid-late ‘90s and early ‘00s. Employee perks were pretty decent for the time; for example, he could borrow a laptop to play with and learn on at home — we…
> They would also give you a PC in agreement for continued employment for N years.
Do you mean that in exchange for accepting a PC, he had to agree to a multiple-year enforced contract? Is the right to leave a company even a right that one can sign away in the US? Would people really do that for a few thousand dollars? That seems shockingly close to indentured servitude... "we'll pay two months of your rent up front, but you can't quit for five years no matter what we do to you."