In the 1970s Americans were… well… we weren’t overly smart, okay? I was born in 1971, I can admit we made odd design choices. Design Line phones are perfect example of this.
While ones such as the Mickey Mouse phone went on to be an icon of the 1970s, the others were, to be blunt, just not good phones. Sure they matched your “warm browns and yellows of old Spain that provide(d) the decorative backgrounds of many people’s living rooms and dens,” but many of these phones I tried back then always felt like they were going to break if you put the least amount of strain on them. Considering they sold for $39.95 to $109.95 in 1979 dollars, this was not something you would ever want happening.
You can’t fault people for wanting unique phones as we still do that all of the time with our smartphones, but quite often it’s more about what they can do for us as opposed to what they look like. Sure I’ve seen smartphones that I thought looked awesome, but I alreayd had a perfectly good one, so why switch it out? I guess if you were that obsessed with the interior design of your room, you just might.
Of course, I’m not sure if some of you will view this as a novel idea of these designer phones, or the novel idea of a land line.
