Crazy Catalog? DAK Industries Technology Catalog
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I’m not sure how I ended up on the mailing list. Perhaps it wasn’t even me, but my Dad. But one of my favorite things to randomly get in the mail as a teenager was the DAK catalog.
Official DAK Industries Incorporated, DAK was founded by Drew Alan Kaplan. He would find unusual technology gear, usually on closeout, and put it all together in a catalog that was sent out a few times a year. He proclaimed “I choose the products” and he definitely chose fun products.
But this was no ordinary catalog. This was not like a Radio Shack catalog. This was art.
Each product in the catalog gots its own page with a detailed and completely overhyped writeup of the item on offer. Sometimes an item would get two pages.
I recently got my hands on the DAK Industries Incorporated Early Winter 87 catalog and it is glorious!
On the cover is an Epson laptop with a built-in micro cassette and a 5-line LCD. It’s referred to as “Computer PT Boat” in its writeup on page 1 and got 3 pages!
Other great headlines for products include:
“The Truth About VCRs”
“1200 Baud Smart Duck”
“Smart Sound Detonator”
The catalog is 65 pages of wonderful tech gear. There are lots of speakers, computers, audio equipment, radar detectors, watches, printers, phones, and more.
And I can’t forget about the cassettes. DAK was always pushing its MLX cassettes as a lower-cost option for high-quality recording.
Each writeup hyped the product and really made you want to have it. The price was often not mentioned until the very end and there was an extra cost for “P&H” or postage and handling as it was called back then.
Want to spend just $169 for a CD player, which was actually a pretty great price back then? DAK has you covered with the “Remote Sound Blaze Plus”!
Unfortunately for me I never actually ordered anything from DAK. I was just a teenager at the time and most of these things were totally out of my price range. But it sure was fun reading about everything!
Do you remember the DAK catalog? Did anyone out there actually order something from it? If so, share what you bought.
DAK is still around - https://www.dak.com/. I still buy from them. ;-) Back in the day, I got a pair of BSR floor speakers with 16-inch woofers, and then a Cerwin Vega subwoofer (that serves as a printer stand. Drew sold it to one of his fans, and much of what they sell now is software - but the DAK DePopper is must-have software if you rip LPs or cassette tapes to MP3, and the DAK Equalizer gives ripped cassette music some low-end pop. Great stuff still ....
I never got the entire catalog, but I remember their 1 & 2-page ads in Omni magazine. Them and JS&A, makers of the Bone Fone!