27.06.09
In my latest warehouse lot, I was fortunate enough to come across some old Playmeter Magazines. Playmeter was a magazine about the arcade industry geared toward operators and distributors in the industy. Some of the articles in there are really mundane, and some are very interesting. While following article is pretty dry, I think it is neat to learn some history about a parts provider that most in the collecting hobby are familiar in name only, but not in the actual company or history. Below and after the jump, you will find 4 scans of the pages of the magazine. Click on each smaller version to view the larger, readable version. Cool to note: the author of this article is none other than famed repair tech Randy Fromm.
June 27th, 2009 at 10:28 pm
Wico’s history may or may not be easy to come by, but I really enjoyed reading over these pages. Thanks Preston for scanning and sharing them…
June 28th, 2009 at 10:44 am
Great read, thanks for sharing. Two things really stand out for me, one, the Harry Marcus connection mentioned. That family had a LOT of business dealings in Chicago and owned some serious real estate, mostly near the old stockyard district. The second is the big Penn-Ray advertisement right below the Wico article. Too funny!
I think its great that you are helping to preserve this history…these little bits help fill in the gaps that have been taken for granted for too long.
Chris
August 29th, 2009 at 10:57 am
It was fun to read this again. Because it isn’t technical, it ws buried in file. I haven’t seen it in 25 years!
I like the BIG hair!
Funny to see the IBM computer too. We probably carry around more processing power in our pockets now.
The demise of WICO was rally surprising at the time. As a young man, working in the amusement industry in the 70s and 80s, I had always thought that coin-op arcades and WICO would be around forever. Boy, was I wrong.
Randy Fromm
September 1st, 2009 at 7:42 pm
Get ready for an influx from Game Room Magazine!
October 1st, 2009 at 9:27 pm
[...] issue of Gameroom magazine to find a nice little snippet covering an article I wrote about an old Playmeter Magazine article about WICO. I am a subscriber and was shocked to find that my little site got picked up by the [...]