The DAK Industries Catalog is a wild masterpiece of copywriting. One carefully-curated product per page, with no table of specifications or even a price box, just densely information-packed, quirky, well-paced, clever conversational descriptions of each item. Every word is the product of Drew A. Kaplan (whose initials provide DAK its name), a kind of blog in its own time. Cabel Sasser recently wrote a definitive tribute that provides many more details:
https://cabel.com/2023/11/06/dak-and-the-golden-age-of-gadge...
For a still-contemporary comparison, Trader Joe’s still publishes a similar (but more condensed and less personal) story-per-item format catalog for its grocery offerings in its Fearless Flyer, which you can find at https://www.traderjoes.com/home/ff
OMG this was a total flashback. I remember getting those catalogs as a teenager and spending hours paging through them. Looking at it again I can still remember some of the products and copy almost verbatim. Fortunately I couldn't afford any of it (I say fortunately because it was all garbage, but I didn't realize that at the time).
OK maybe garbage is a bit strong. It was lower tier, often surplus or closeout consumer-grade gear. DAK liked to use words like "audiophile" in their copy and nothing they sold was close to that. It was OK stuff, probably fine for most people, on par with what you might buy at a place like Radio Shack.
"Close out" is usually a great value. The law of diminishing returns says midrange audio gear already sounded great by the late 80s. Sure you could spend $$$ on high-end gear today to eke out another 5% of response and range, but it's not a huge difference. After a minute your brain adapts anyway.
I remember 808-style bass coming from a block away back then, not to mention my Radio Shack super-tweeters were the best I've ever heard then or since[1]. (Although to be fair I probably can't hear very high frequency any longer.)
That's how I look at DAK—happy memories, getting good stuff at a good price. With copywriting tips on the side. I even visited the storeroom in Canoga Park a couple of times.
I have a pair of battery-powered speakers from DAK ca. 1984 that still work. Comes in a carrying case with a cubby for the Walkman it's designed to work with.
I'm fascinated by the quantity of audio stuff in the catalog. I guess audio was the mainstream nerd outlet in the 80s...computers were too new (I was a young adult, very much into my Commodore 64 in 1985. Audio wasn't on my radar, though I'd be getting my first Walkman in a few years).
I was into it in the 90s, it was really fun to build your system. You'd dream of how much better it would be with a 3-way crossover or even just that equalizer and it did make a big difference sometimes.
Tighter integration killed it mostly. Integrated amplifiers in speakers and your audio source already has an EQ and everything else you'd want all in one unit kinda takes the fun out of it.
Love the catalogs as a teen. In my 20s, fate would have me move to be in easy driving distance of DAK's outlet store in Canoga Park where products could be tried out and purchased to carry out that day. They also had some deep discounts on overstocks and returns. Mr. Kaplan's copywriting was enthusiastic but sometimes less that accurate, especially in terms of product comfort. Getting to be hands on with the products before purchasing was a nice benefit of the outlet store.
I had the original 1977 "Products That Think" catalog [1]. Sugarman did a great job hyping some not-so-spectacular products. I did buy the Sharp Elsimate EL-8130 calculator and considered getting his "Pocket CB" but it encouraged me to learn just enough about RF to know that his tiny fixed-crystal CH14 AM 27.125 MHz device would be a bad choice to communicate with other CBs which is what I really wanted to do. It may look cheap now but remember, for $20 you could then easily get a pair of CB-CH14 kid walkie talkies with longer telescoping antennas, what it was essentially.
> And I wanted this SK-1 keyboard so bad, I actually got it for Christmas one year! But from Santa, not DAK
That "Symphonic Sorcerer" Casio SK-1 sampling keyboard is a legendary instrument. The first dirt cheap ($49.50?!) sampling keyboard (and synthesizer), it ended up being "used by Fatboy Slim, Beck, Autechre, Portishead, Bloodhound Gang, Nine Inch Nails, Incubus and Blur."[1]
The first video recorder we had in the 80s was a rebranded version of this one: https://archive.org/details/1985.fall.dak/page/18/mode/1up - the same square buttons for play and stop, the same smaller buttons for pause/record/ffw/rev, the same buttons and LEDs for the 12 cable tuner channels (each of which had a fiddly little wheel and band selector to tune it under the cover at the bottom). Only it was branded "Orion", had a slightly different design and was bought in 1986 at the very first MediaMarkt in Munich, West Germany...
Fun fact: The "Family Tutor" computer on page 20 being closed out for $169 ($488 in 2024) is a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SV-328 - the design template for the MSX, on which Konami launched Bomberman, Metal Gear, et cetera.
The cabel.com article linked to in many comments has the copy that explains it. [1]
One of the DAK signatures was buying other company's production line "mistakes", "fixing" them, and selling the result.
In this case, the original Thunder Lizard was another firm's speaker[2]. The mistake was that it assembled with the wrong (inferior) tweeter. DAK bought the mistakes, the correct tweeter, and sold them.
For a still-contemporary comparison, Trader Joe’s still publishes a similar (but more condensed and less personal) story-per-item format catalog for its grocery offerings in its Fearless Flyer, which you can find at https://www.traderjoes.com/home/ff