Growing up, portable cassette players were always called “freestyles” here. I never knew it was a marketing thing, or that some other countries also objected to the naming.
this is “original research”, which means i dicked around on the internet archive for half an hour. it may be wrong.
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One Sony Greenland please
Australian swedish unity never been higher
that’s what made me do this. i have no idea why they both used the same name, and i can’t find any documents explaining the reason for the australians doing it.
Our machinations are beyond your understanding
Pretty bold to name it Greenland in Greenland. Sony just out here going “Hey Greenland, buy a Sony Greenland to play your tapes on.”
…that might have been me
There are only 50,000 people there, if they had to hire someone to think of a better name it would have become unaffordable for the average greenlander.
This is fake news! It was always called “Tragbares Musikkassettenabspielgerät” in Germany.
the swedish language council tried to make it “bärspelare” as well, but to no avail
I was confused about it being called a “Stowaway” in the UK, as they were always called “Walkman” as far as I was aware - though apparently it was indeed called the “Stowaway” from mid-1979 for at least a few months, possibly even a year or two. It was called the “Walkman” from “the early 1980s”.
yeah there is very little info on this stuff. i chose a map from 81 but at that point it was already a walkman in england. however i did find a picture of the “sony stowaway” original packaging.
sound about? what the fuck kinda lame ass name is that
Very interesting, well done for the research!
What we can surely all agree is that all these names, especially Walkman (Bill Bryson: “it’s not a man and it doesn’t walk”) were terrible.
it’s uh… wasei-eigo. it was meant to, quote,
introduce the idea of “Japanese-ness” into global culture, synonymous with miniaturization and high-technology.[60] The “Walk-men” and “Walk-women” in advertisements were created to be the ideal reflections of the viewing audience.[61] Sony implemented a marketing strategy, hiring young adults to walk around in public wearing a Walkman.
naturally, the marketing agencies in some countries didn’t really get it (see also: the Honda Pussy) and suggested different names
I wonder why they decided that Sweden should get a name different than the other European. Maybe IKEA had already copyrighted Wålkmån?
that i can actually answer! there was an entire movement/subculture thing anchored to the word “freestyle” in the late 70’s-early 80’s. think rollerblading, skateboarding, downhill skiing, extreme sport stuff, and pastel overalls, headbands and sunglasses:
there was even a band named freestyle. my mum was really into them as a teen.
also, sony sweden insisted. they were adamant that “people wouldn’t get it” if the thing was called a walkman. and they were right; the word freestyle is still in common use, while “walkman” never really took off.
I have to admit a freestyler sounds better than a stowaway and a sound-about for sure. Might even beat Walkman if I never heard of either words and could make a decision unbiased. Do you also know anything about Australia’s reason?
i have no idea :/ a while back i read an interview with the guy at sony sweden who made the decision, but for australia there is literally no info. i sincerely doubt it was a coordinated effort, since it went on sale in like 1979.
Maybe they saw a vhs of Swedish freestylers and said we want that too.
Swedes love freestyle skateboarding. 2 in particular might be responsible for the sport still existing in Europe at all, Stefan Akesson and Denis Sopovic.
oh wow, stefanie is even from the same area as me and i had no idea
Even odder that Ireland would be different to the uk. Most marketing and branding is unified for both due to the same language and distribution networks. This has a visually changed since brexit, but this was the 80s, when most of Ireland’s trade was with the uk, not Europe and the USA.
that’s what the disclaimer is for. i have no idea what it was called in ireland, but i know it was available and that the stowaway name was only used very, very briefly.
Haha, yes. Even as I wrote it, I wondered if it was just a case that Ireland was not listed for the UK market. Also inwonder d with Sweden having a different name was Denmark just an afterthought. Their languages are quite similar is often a similar market.
Perhaps multiple names were used for only a short period while the markets were tested.
swedish and danish are close grammatically, at least on paper, but common words can differ a lot.
