Something you always wanted but turned out disappointing

[Bods]

Was thinking the other day about this

Was there any old toys or anything you really wanted when younger and you finally got one years later and it turned out to be absolute shite

I used to love looking at the old Catalogues in the 80's and the Ghetto Blasters were one of the cool things I wanted, I never set my sights to high because I knew I wouldn't get it, if I had got a New BMX I was looking at the Raleigh Extra Burner, near bottom spec but I really liked the colour scheme

Anyway Ghetto Blasters, there were a few I would of liked but this Philips one wasn't too pricey, thought it looked cool with 4 speakers on the front, when I was buying loads of them off ebay I finally won one of these, couldn't wait to test it, not that I'm a fan of Philips Electronics, cheap tacky plastic most of it and this didn't disappoint there

I've never been so miffed about how bad something sounded as this puppy, It was beyond bad and i've got loads of ghetto blasters and had many I've sold so i'm used to varying quality of them but this had to be the worst, tape deck I had to fix and it wasn't worth it. I thought the Asda special Questar Turbo I had was rubbish but I bet it sounded tons better, should of compared them, even a lower end Sony that would of been more expensive sounded worse than the Questar

And the winner of most disappointing thing I finally got is

 

[TheDaddy]

Yeh Sex ........

Dave.

 

[Bods]

Yeh Sex ........

Dave.

Didn't know you lived in Wales

 

[Vamino]

An Akai Midi Hi-Fi I bought from Freemans catalogue.

All in one, record deck gave feedback at half volume, the cassette deck played fast and recordings sounded like they had been recorded underwater. I thought the bass was great on it, you could hear it in the next room if you put your ear on the wall.

My mate then showed me his old looking mismatched Hi-Fi separates with 1 wooden 6' speaker. He played a Reggae dub plate cassette which proceeded to shake his moms house, rattling plates in her cupboards and rattling the metal window frames.

I never bought Akai again.

 

[Vamino]

.

 

[CMYKhazi-Dan]

Yeh Sex ........

Dave.

Bet there's a fair few of us where it didn't quite work out with Kelly Lebrock in the shower!? 🤣

 

[John Bennett]

Reebok Pump trainers.
I was never fashionable at school, didn't bother me too much, but the idea of trainers with a big orange button was too much.
So I finally managed to get enough money for a pair and wore them to a high school party.

I got one 'Nice trainers' comment, but I felt like a right wally in massive bright-white size 12 clown shoes with a button that crushed the veins in my feet if I pushed it. The thought I'd paid £100 made me sick and I think I wore them once and pledged to remain untrendy foreverafter.

 

[Brettster]

Commodore Amiga A500.
My least favourite home computer, and I've owned most of them.
Sold my C64 and my Specialized Rock Hopper to pay for it.

 

[CMYKhazi-Dan]

Commodore Amiga A500.
My least favourite home computer, and I've owned most of them.
Sold my C64 and my Specialized Rock Hopper to pay for it.

Everybody I knew said Amiga was amazing. Got an A1200 with multisync monitor in '94(?), all in £700. Pants.

Left the monitor to rot in the garden in about 2006. Regret that now 😭😭😭

 

[CMYKhazi-Dan]

Monkey island and Indy Fate Of Atlantis were good, also Sensible Soccer. Glorified games console which I wasn't allowed 😭

And now my parents are baffled why I have six arcade cabs in my house! 😆😆😆

Quite like:

A woman drove me to drink and I didn't even have the decency to thank her.

W. C. Fields

 

[Del Griffith]

Neo Geo AES. I’m not knocking the games or the operational side because i love lots of snk games. It’s just I spent a lot of my childhood drooling over the AES console as this tough heavy duty arcade system that I could only ever dream of affording/owning. When I was about 20, earning my own money I thought fuck it I’m importing one. When it arrived like most Jap products it felt cheapo, weighed nothing and left me feeling totally deflated and disappointed not what I’d dreamt about all those years. I still ended up with another as a spare tho 😂

 

[Sbdesign]

An arcade with loads of games on it.
Disappointed as I Felt I didn’t value any title.
Eventually I started collecting dedicates, realising that for me it wasnt specifically the games in particular that I longed, but the cabs and their shapes, artwork, smells, distressing, the specific type of buttons or layouts.

 

[Bods]

An Akai Midi Hi-Fi I bought from Freemans catalogue.

All in one, record deck gave feedback at half volume, the cassette deck played fast and recordings sounded like they had been recorded underwater. I thought the bass was great on it, you could hear it in the next room if you put your ear on the wall.

My mate then showed me his old looking mismatched Hi-Fi separates with 1 wooden 6' speaker. He played a Reggae dub plate cassette which proceeded to shake his moms house, rattling plates in her cupboards and rattling the metal window frames.

I never bought Akai again.

I've not had many Akai Hi-Fi Systems over the years, some of the later 90's ones but i have a few Ghetto Blasters as my 3rd boombox was an Akai, was top of the range one in 1985, they made some totally unique designs which I like about the company

We were in boots with parents and I heard them turn up what I thought was a Hi-Fi system being demonstrated to someone so i popped round to see and there was this small boombox that sounded about 4 times bigger, soon as I saw it I just wanted one there and then but they were too expensive, think it was over £200 at the time

Probably in town again after Christmas and the Akai was reduced to £129.99 in Boots sale, They only had that one left which I think was display one in Red but I had to have it, could of been for Birthday present I guess, not sure now so long ago, probably 1986 and I really felt lucky this time as I usually ended up with something I didn't really want but was best my parents could afford

Only problem was when I recorded one channel was lower than the other, it got returned for repair but was same, wondered if it was me doing something wrong or just being too fussy and reluctantly it went back for good, i wasn't happy, in late 80's when started working I saw advert for Hyper-Fi in London, they had them for sale for £119.99 brand new so I bought one again and still got it in the box, have a photo of my original somewhere sat on top of my JVC Amp as i'd moved on to separates then, second hand stuff

Not mine but that's it, I love the clean front design of it and big name/model with graphic and energizer button that boosts the high frequency and 3 Dimensional speakers don't you just love the 80's and these terms they used, basically they have passive radiators at the back to boost the bass, there only about 3.5" woofers, in the right place though it used to sound pretty good

I also bought a earlier PJ-33 from a guy that had it new straight from Akai UK offices, he was working there and said what's best model portable and that was it at the time, all boxed too and boxed PJ-W55 which is Twin tape version of 35, both i'd never known about till internet days

 

[L_____E_____T]

Commodore Amiga A500.
My least favourite home computer, and I've owned most of them.
Sold my C64 and my Specialized Rock Hopper to pay for it.

Oh no! I've just got one an a few disks... I haven't booted it up just yet, so I might need to report back. I have the A500 mini but that's very different.

 

[channel27]

Commodore Amiga A500.
My least favourite home computer, and I've owned most of them.
Sold my C64 and my Specialized Rock Hopper to pay for it.

Blasphemy!

 

[Stokers]

Neo Geo AES. I’m not knocking the games or the operational side because i love lots of snk games. It’s just I spent a lot of my childhood drooling over the AES console as this tough heavy duty arcade system that I could only ever dream of affording/owning. When I was about 20, earning my own money I thought fuck it I’m importing one. When it arrived like most Jap products it felt cheapo, weighed nothing and left me feeling totally deflated and disappointed not what I’d dreamt about all those years. I still ended up with another as a spare tho 😂

Sounds familiar, the Neo Geo AES was the five star, max level console back in the 90s. I have a pretty decent memory for meaningless facts, so I can still recall the name of the only kid at my school who had one (James Gadbury) So legendary was the AES, that James' achieved a huge increase in status, despite only ever having one game for it - which was 2020 super baseball I think!

It was 2003 beore I could afford to import one, once I got my first job and made a bit of money. By that time I had been playing the games on emulators and gaming had obviously moved on, so it was just a novelty item really. The controller felt cheap and the RGB output was terrible, in fact I had to go down the rabbit hole of finding an early serial number console to get something I could live with. Thankfully a kindly member of neo-geo.com (Rich_RS if memory serves) helped me out and I got another AES which looked decent.

At the time I had it running through a big 25" Sony CRT, with floor standing speakers and I played it quite a bit.. but it was a bit of a letdown overall

*oh look Neo Geo.com still has a picture of my old setup! First thing I notice now is the awful carpet! God i'm old.

 

[Del Griffith]

Sounds familiar, the Neo Geo AES was the five star, max level console back in the 90s. I have a pretty decent memory for meaningless facts, so I can still recall the name of the only kid at my school who had one (James Gadbury) So legendary was the AES, that James' achieved a huge increase in status, despite only ever having one game for it - which was 2020 super baseball I think!

It was 2003 beore I could afford to import one, once I got my first job and made a bit of money. By that time I had been playing the games on emulators and gaming had obviously moved on, so it was just a novelty item really. The controller felt cheap and the RGB output was terrible, in fact I had to go down the rabbit hole of finding an early serial number console to get something I could live with. Thankfully a kindly member of neo-geo.com (Rich_RS if memory serves) helped me out and I got another AES which looked decent.

At the time I had it running through a big 25" Sony CRT, with floor standing speakers and I played it quite a bit.. but it was a bit of a letdown overall

*oh look Neo Geo.com still has a picture of my old setup! First thing I notice now is the awful carpet! God i'm old.

That’s a cool looking setup you had there, Those speakers look awesome ❤️

It’s quite a similar story for me re the rgb output. My first was a later model with terrible video output. I started looking into why after I got it and then ended up hunting down a low serial model to replace it with. Kept em both for a while in the end but the early one had a much better RGB output. It still wasn’t as crisp as an MVS through a supergun tho. Controller wise I prefer the Kidney sticks to the original versions, Still use them now.

Nobody in my school had one that I knew of, It was truly a mystic console when I was a kid. Hahaha if they had would probably have remembered their name same as yourself. I retain no useful info at all but ask me where a certain machine was located in 1988 Blackpool/Skegness and I’ll reel em off.

 

[Retroman839]

I always thought Raleigh Vector was cool ..
I never got one . I had seen them from a distance or on tv.. normally I would have rally wanted it more seeing touching it in real life ..
And then it happened , my mate got one

It wasn’t like the bike i had imagined it would be.
( a bike with a talking computer built in it and cool lights & sound effects )

It was just a normal bike dressed up in silly plastic parts!

It was a lesson to be learned for sure.
And I felt a real light relief for not fellong enviouse or jelouse Of my friend, because he was my friend I never wanted to feel that way about my friends.

 

[Bods]

I liked those bikes made to look like motorbikes

 

[Retroman839]

I think I had the top red one
Mine had a red petrol tank but I think sure it was a plastic petrol tank
Most likely I had a bootleg of it and it was bloody heavy.

I have a chipper & and a burner jnr