alt Hacker NewsThe raccoons who made computer magazine ads great
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I'd love to have a poster of the picture in the "PC Preppy" advert from October 1984[0]. I wonder how I could aquire the highest resolution possible...
Love raccoons <3
[0] https://d1pkj6r18lfvhs.archive.is/BxyNA/d05003d20de92f868e5b...
"The point of the characters, it said, was to add 'a human touch to high tech.'"
Something we need today, too
Love these. The artist's commented too: https://technologizer.com/home/2025/04/22/pc-connection-ads-...
AST had raccoons on one or two of his books, earlier editions of “ Operating Systems Design and Implementation” iirc. I always thought cartoon raccoons on the cover of a technical text book seemed like an odd choice. I wonder if there’s a connection?
I absolutely adore this article on computer ad history.
What ever became of the Private Eye headset? Seems amazing for the time.
It's kind of odd, seeing the MicroWarehouse Girl.
I very much remember her, smiling out from many different magazines.
Might be hugged to death, no current copies on archive.org or archive.today :(
Feeling cognitive dissonance given this is making me feel nostalgic for advertising.
The AI-generated raccoon in 2024 sure is a gut punch after seeing the lovingly rendered art from yesteryear. Completely devoid of the personality of the originals, even in the Christmas card, he can only dream of living up to the standard they set.
Not a single one of those images depict a single trash panda eating garbage, having babies in an attic, or defecating all over the house.
I asked ChatGPT to imagine pretty much the same scene as that top drawing. It's such a great example of LLM's - having zero understanding of the real world - has the racoons looking at the computer but from behind it.
https://sdmntprwestus.oaiusercontent.com/files/00000000-c810...
It's buried deep in the article, but what made PC Connection amazing was the shipping.
You could phone call a human in the wee hours of the morning, and have it show up later that same day. Or pay only a little and have it into two days. Compared to every other mail-order retailer in the universe at the time, it was insane, to have such selection and speed.