Once upon a time, there were TIME-branded tech products--lots of them. Here's their story.

Hi, I’m Judy, one of the operators here at TIME magazine. Remember, if you call now, you’ll get TIME at almost half off the cover price. And this exclusive TIME AM/FM walkabout, free. This offer ends soon, so call right now. Our operators are standing by.

If that rings even the faintest of bells, you were watching TV in the 1980s, back when TIME found new readers via direct-response TV commercials–the sort which invite you to pick up your phone and dial a 1-800 number. We ran scads of these spots. And to make the proposition of getting TIME irresistible, we offered free gadgets to people who ordered subscriptions. Gadgets which, at the time, were at least sort of cool–digital clocks, pushbutton phones, pocket-sized radios–yet could be manufactured at price points that made the idea of giving them away economically plausible. Judged by today’s more elevated standards, they’re all quaint, cheesy and/or silly, but they did their job at the time.

I remember the ads and the gadgets well. Not that I took the bait–I was a student and read TIME at the library. But I did own a TIME giveaway item: a 35mm camera that my grandmother, one of the most loyal TIME readers I’ve ever known, received and turned over to me as a gift. It’s still among my possessions, I think, but I haven’t run across it in years. Most of the devices TIME shipped out, I suspect, eventually met similar fates.

As a child of the ’80s, I’d be nostalgic about this stuff even if I didn’t work at TIME. Thanks to YouTube, a bunch of the original commercials are now back, each one touting the wonders of a different gizmo sporting a TIME logo. Would you indulge me as I revisit them?

The TIME Machine, a Desktop Clock (1983)

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YouTube

Adjectives used to describe it: “handsome,” “distinctive”

Special features cited: liquid-crystal readout, quartz accuracy, perpetual calendar

TIME operator featured: Judy, who would become a durable spokesperson

TIME covers shown: “Royalty vs. the Press,” ”Defending Defense: Budget Battles and Star Wars,” “Fighting Cocaine’s Grip,” “The KGB Today,” “Paul Newman: Quite a Guy,” “Star Wars III: Return of the Jedi”

Celebrities spotted: Pope John Paul II, Yasser Arafat, Prince Charles, Princess Diana, Prince William, Richard Pryor, The Beatles, Mahatma Gandhi, Richard Nixon, Neil Armstrong, Meryl Streep, Helmut Kohl

Subscription rate: 27 issues for three easy installments of $7.77

The skinny: I’m not sure if this is the first TIME gadget-giveaway ad, but it typifies the format. Operator Judy calls our attention to the fact that we’re going to learn about the special offer. Then we hear the stirring TIME theme song—“Read TIME and Understand”–accompanied by imagery of TIME covers, news events, celebrities (especially Pope John Paul II), patriotic symbols and people deeply engaged by TIME. In various commercials, these readers showed their engagement in an array of ways: by arching their eyebrows, tilting or chewing on their eyeglasses, nodding, tugging their caps or forelocks, scratching their chins and laughing out loud.

The gadget in this early commercial is just a clock. But in the mid-1980s, quartz LCD timepieces still felt like new technology. And as later giveaways will show, we liked giving out time-telling gizmos—which makes sense for a publication called TIME.

The TIME Pushbutton Phone (circa 1984)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvzmJxPGLZc]

YouTube

Adjective used to describe it: “exclusive”

Special features cited: easy to install, eliminates monthly leasing charges, automatic redialing

TIME operator featured: Judy

TIME covers shown: “Babies: What Do They Know? When Do They Know It?,” “Japan: A Nation in Search of Itself,” “Homecoming: The Return of the Polish Pope,” “Machine of the Year: The Computer Moves In,” “America’s Olympics,” “The KGB Today”

Celebrities spotted: Indira Gandhi, Fidel Castro, Prince Charles, Princess Diana, Prince William, the cast of M*A*S*H, Richard Pryor, Paul Newman, Helmut Kohl

Subscription rate: 27 issues for three easy installments of $7.97

TIME

The skinny: To me, the shocking reminder of how much times have changed isn’t that touch-tone dialing was still noteworthy in 1984—it’s that we pointed out that using this phone would allow you to stop renting your handset from the phone company, something Ma Bell required its customers to do for decades. (1984 was year that the AT&T monopoly was broken up into the Baby Bells.)

This ad shows a 1983 cover—“Babies: What Do They Know? When Do They Know It?”—which we apparently considered to be an effective selling tool, or at least a good example of an appealing TIME cover. We kept on using it in commercials, sometimes leaving the camera lovingly focused on it, until at least 1987.

The TIME AM/FM Walkabout (1984)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4Rtl8vUjqo]

YouTube

Adjective used to describe it: “state of the art”

Special features cited: AM and FM; clear reception; full, rich sound; padded, adjustable headphones; weighs just ounces

TIME operator featured: Judy

TIME covers shown: “America’s Olympics: A Gold Medal for Los Angeles?,” “Michael Jackson: Why He’s a Thriller,” “Cholesterol: Now The Bad News,” “Machine of the Year: The Computer Moves In,” “Royalty vs.the Press,” “Babies: What Do They Know? When Do They Know It?,” “Maggie [Thatcher] By a Mile: What It Means, What She’ll Do”

Celebrities spotted: Fidel Castro, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Andrei Gromyko, Sally Ride and the Challenger crew, Pope John Paul II (twice), Brooke Shields, Margaret Thatcher, Eddie Murphy, the Politburo, Nastassja Kinski, Harold Washington

Subscription rate: 27 issues for three easy installments of $7.97

The skinny: It has some sort of passing physical resemblance to a Sony Walkman–the dominant portable-audio device of the 19080s–and a name with the word “Walk” in it. But I’m not even sure if TIME’s Walkabout did stereo.

The TIME Alarm Clock/Telephone (1985)

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