Coleco
More info
- Creator
- Maurice Greenberg
- Released
- 1932–1988
- Type
- Toys and game consoles
The leather-goods firm that became a console maker, sold Cabbage Patch dolls, and killed itself with a computer.
Coleco was founded in 1932 in Hartford as the Connecticut Leather Company — shoe leather. It moved through plastics into electronics: first the Pong clones of the Telstar line (1976), then the ColecoVision (1982), a console known for near-arcade ports and an adapter that let it play Atari 2600 cartridges.
The Coleco Adam, a 1983 home computer, was buggy and widely seen as a fiasco, even as the Cabbage Patch Kids dolls became a runaway hit. Over-expansion, the Adam flop and the great video-game crash sank the company, which went bankrupt in 1988. Compare the earlier generation's Magnavox Odyssey.