Coleco

Coleco Inc.

Industry	Video game industry
Founded	1932 2005 (revival)
Headquarters	Manalapan, New Jersey, U.S.[1]
Key people	Maurice Greenberg Arnold Greenberg[2]
Products	Video games, consumer electronics[3]
Website	www.coleco.com

Coleco Inc. is an American company founded in 1932 by Maurice Greenberg as "Connecticut Leather Company".^[4] It became a highly successful toy company in the 1980s, known for its mass-produced version of Cabbage Patch Kids dolls and its video game consoles, the Coleco Telstar and ColecoVision.^[5][6][7] The company is headquartered in Manalapan, New Jersey.

History

Coleco originally processed shoe leather, which later led to a business in leather craft kits in the 1950s. They began manufacturing plastic moulding and moved into plastic wading pools in the 1960s. The leather part of the business was then sold off.^[8]

Under CEO Arnold Greenberg, the company entered the video game console business with the Telstar in 1976. Dozens of companies were introducing game systems that year after Atari's successful Pong console. Nearly all of these new games were based on General Instrument's "Pong-on-a-chip". However, General Instrument had underestimated demand, and there were severe shortages. Coleco had been one of the first to place an order, and was one of the few companies to receive an order in full. Though dedicated game consoles did not last long on the market, their early order enabled Coleco to break even.

Coleco continued to do well in electronics. They transitioned next into handheld electronic games, a market popularized by Mattel. Coleco produced two very popular lines of games, the "head to head" series of two player sports games, (Football, Baseball, Basketball, Soccer, Hockey) and the Mini-Arcade series of licensed video arcade titles such as Donkey Kong and Ms. Pac-Man. A third line of educational handhelds was also produced and included the Electronic Learning Machine, Lil Genius, Digits, and a trivia game called Quiz Wiz.^[9] Launched in 1982, their first four tabletop Mini-Arcades, for Pac-Man, Galaxian, Donkey Kong, and Frogger, sold approximately three million units within a year.^[10] Among these, 1.5 million units were sold for Pac-Man alone.^[11][12] In 1983, they released three more Mini-Arcades: for Ms. Pac-Man, Donkey Kong Junior, and Zaxxon.^[10]

The ColecoVision video game console

Coleco returned to the video game console market in 1982 with the launch of the ColecoVision. While the system was quite popular, Coleco hedged their bet on video games by introducing a line of ROM cartridges for the Atari 2600 and Intellivision. They also introduced the Coleco Gemini, a clone of the popular Atari 2600.

When the video game business began to implode in 1983, it seemed clear that video game consoles were being supplanted by home computers. Coleco's strategy was to introduce the Coleco Adam home computer, both as a stand-alone system and as an expansion module to the ColecoVision. This effort failed, in large part because Adams were often unreliable. The Adam flopped; Coleco withdrew from electronics early in 1985.^[3]

Also in 1983, Coleco released the Cabbage Patch Kids series of dolls which were wildly successful.^[13] Flush with their success, in 1986 they purchased beleaguered Selchow & Righter, manufacturers of Scrabble, Parcheesi, and Trivial Pursuit,^[14] sales of which had plummeted, leaving Selchow & Righter with warehouses full of unsold games. The purchase price was $75 million. That same year, Coleco introduced an ALF plush based on the furry alien character who had his own television series at the time, as well as a talking version and a cassette-playing "Storytelling ALF" doll.^[15] The combination of the purchase of Selchow and Righter, the disastrous Adam computer, and the public's waning infatuation with Cabbage Patch dolls contributed to Coleco's financial decline. In 1988, the company filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy.^[16]

The reorganized Coleco sold off all of its North American assets and outsourced thousands of jobs to foreign countries, closing plants in Amsterdam, New York and other cities.^[17] In 1989, Hasbro and Canada based SLM Action Sports Inc. purchased Coleco's assets.^[18]

In 2005, River West Brands, a Chicago-based brand revitalization company, re-introduced Coleco to the marketplace. In late 2006, they introduced the Coleco Sonic, a handheld system containing twenty Sega Master System and Sega Game Gear games.

See also

• Electronic Quarterback
• Sectaurs
• Starcom: The U.S. Space Force
• Telstar Combat!

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Coleco.

• Official website
• Article at The Dot Eaters, a history of Coleco and the ColecoVision products
• www.colecomuseum.com, dedicated to COLECO collectibles
• Company News; SLM Action Sports Buys Coleco Units

v t e Atari 2600 Games 1977 launch titles Air-Sea Battle Basic Math Blackjack Combat Indy 500 Star Ship Street Racer Surround Video Olympics Best-selling games Pac-Man Pitfall! Asteroids Missile Command Space Invaders Demon Attack Atlantis Adventure River Raid Kaboom! Game lists List of Atari 2600 games List of Atari 2600 prototype games Atari 2600 games List of cancelled Atari 2600 games Game developers Atari, Inc. Activision Imagic Coleco Data Age M Network Parker Brothers Sega Xonox Hardware and emulation Atari 2600 hardware Television Interface Adaptor Atari Flashback Coleco Gemini GameLine Starpath Supercharger Cuttle Cart Stella z26 PC Atari Emulator Related articles Atari 2600 homebrew Atari 2500 Atari 2800 Atari Age Racing the Beam: The Atari Video Computer System Category