Radio Shack - Life in America 

Who remembers their audio brand, REALISTIC !?!

Just reading a Radio Shack catalog made you smarter. Sad day when we lost Radio Shack in America.

I've never seen a business try so hard to kill itself. They deliberately stopped catering to their ham radio and stereo customers and became nothing but a telephone store. The first really good stereo my husband and I bought was a Realistic component system in the early 70's. They were a full service operation that delivered and installed. I am still using the giant floor standing speakers. When I had the Geek Squad here recently to install some new stereo equipment, I asked if they thought I needed new speakers and they said absolutely not, that they sounded perfect and crystal clear, some of the best they had heard.

I remember Radio Shack very fondly, along with Sears, which is almost gone too. The thing about RS was that wonderful electronics smell that hit you when you walked through the door. You could also get any kind of cable or connector you needed there. No matter what. My folks bought my first stereo and turntable there. I listened to LOTS of rock music with that thing. Good memories.

Love these videos, but they remind me my youth is gone 😖🤦‍♀️ however it is great to look back at yesteryear and reminisce ❤️🙏

I miss having a local parts place. They used to have a ton of electronics parts LONG before they started selling cell phones and other junk

In 77 age 14 got my 40 channel CB and latter ICs, solder iron and other stuff to experiment building electronics. It is sad to see Radio Shack going away.

The revolving CEO's are not there to "right" the company. They are there to make their mark, their millions, and then move on. Most companies today work that way. CEO has become a profession rather than someone who actually knows the business and can make it successful.

Radio Shack and Tower Records are the stores I miss the most

So many things bought there. It was THE place to go !

I MISS the "Rat-Shack", was the ONLY place you could get a 47K ohm 1/2W resistor for your electronic project on a Sunday afternoon! Liked the "flyers' they sent on a regular basis where products were marked "60% off", but were STILL over priced because they were marked up 70% BEFORE the flyers went out!!

I remember watching cops chase OJ Simpson riding in a white Ford Bronco down an LA freeway on a TV in the window of a Radio Shack at the local mall. The store is long gone, the mall is dying a slow death, and Simpson, a felon, is still here.

I miss them, there is no replacement. Remember the free flashlights?

I remember as a young kid in 1987 getting the Radio Shack Golden Arrow RC car. It was so fast and well made I was blown away. That little car started a hobby I've enjoyed to this day.

I used to be a RadioShack store manager in the 1970's. It was stupid corporate mismanagement that destroyed RadioShack. This video brings back so many memories.

When I was a teenager I remember seeing a Tandy 2000 computer at a Radio Shack store. Coincidentally is also cost 2,000 dollars. I never believed I would ever be able to afford a computer.

That last" adios" scene was clever it's like they knew that someday that name would come in handy.

Do you remember Radio Shack used to have a battery club and would give away batteries like a 9 volt?

I still have a hand held solar calculator from Radio Shack..it still works!..my brother has a portable cassette player/recorder too..we bought all our batteries for our toys & radios back in 70's & 80's...

I bought alot stuff there over the years, cell phone, cb radio, testing equipment, radio knobs etc. I miss not having one around here.

The yearly catalogs were great. Spent hours looking at it then begging my father to take me there. All the employees were so informative. The only way to get a salesperson at a best buy is to stand and look at the most expensive item in the store then hope someone with a little brains will help you, then go to the actual item that your interested in.

I remember when you could go there and actually purchase parts to make and repair radios. Also you could get free batteries. Tandy computers.

When I got each new RS catalog in my early teens (the 70's!), I was literally ecstatic!!!!!!!!! 💯😎👍

None of them are left in Northwestern ,Alabama. The last time I stopped in and bought something was in the the early 2000's. Now like Grants ,Woolco ,Kmart , Sears and now J.C.Penney's they are long gone. Very sad to even think about it all.

I grew up with my local radio shack store nearby. Kits, electronic components, speakers, cb, shortwave, antennas, batteries, x10, cables, connectors, led’s, project boxes, and so much more. I can say with certainty that I am successful in my career today because of the radio shack stores that were around in my youth. Thanks for sharing this wonderful video.

So sad when towards the end, parts were deligated to just a small corner in the back of the store. Was my favourite store as a young child, before all the cellphone crap.

I worked for a Radio Shack during High School in the late 90s. I actually miss the place. Thanks for posting this, it brought back many good memories. :D

I loved Radio Shack. I miss them terribly for my electronic parts needs. They carried everything in that electronic parts for applications.

Your one observation about a revolving door of CEO's is telling from my past experence in several positions. What is that? It takes an MBA to really wreck a company unlike an entrepreneur which built most of these once great businesses.

When the TSR-80 was cutting edge, my friends and I, in Junior High at the time, would go to our Radio Shack and try to play games on it. How long we were allowed to do this depended on how busy the salesman was, and his tolerance.

In the mid-2000’s I can remember the electronic parts section shrinking. One day I was digging thru the bins looking for a transistor they no longer carried and got flustered listening to the sales man showing some customer all the ring tones on some cell phone. From then on it was mail order for me. It has been coming for years as the salesmen never knew anything about their core products.

I still have my TRS-80 Mod I in strorage. I can't let myself part with it.

I still have a 120 watt stereo receiver from the 60's and it works great. Has a "lifetime" warranty

I recall one year I purchased electronic experiment kits for my sons,to make radios,light projects,sirens etc. ,kept them busy during the Christmas holidays.I loved my weather cube radio.

As a mobile DJ in the late 70s through the 80s Radio Shack was invaluable. Can't tell you how many times I sent my assistant to "run to Radio Shack" to buy an audio jack or some duct tape or a fuse. It was a lifesaver. Whatever I needed I could always find at Radio Shack. Thanks for the memories.

They had a lot of things you needed but couldn't find anywhere else, and it was fun to browse even if you weren't that into it as a hobby. There was one across from my grandmother and I got a transistor radio there I used when at her house and had a card to get a free battery every month.

I loved that place, we would go on a regular basis when I was a kid. Would sit and play on the computers while my folks did business, I still have my Armatron and Robbie Robot... I was convinced that place was the future... Then by the 90's it was "You have questions so do we." The internet killed everything fun...

I worked for Radio Shack in 1980-81 while attending college. Made a nice commission check during the Christmas season. Helped me pay my college expenses. They sold good quality stereo equipment then and I remember that first (Home Computer). It used a cassette tape as a memory device to load simple programs like checkers and chess on the system. Very crude but it was 1980. Great Video, brings back some good memories.

When I was just a budding musician back in the late 60s early 70s i had a RS gold colored 4 guitar-input, one phone-plug out, mixer that was powered by a 9 volt battery! It was like 6 inches long and 2 inches high, with a volume knob for each input. It was completely passive, and totally primitive by today's standards. but it WORKED and that's all I cared about.

It's great that your channel containers these gone but not forgotten videos of stores that's no longer here. This channel preserves the memories of an era that's no longer here. The stores are gone now, but in no way are they forgotten through your priceless videos. Thank you so very much.

My dad was a TV Repairman by trade through RCA/Bell & Howell. I loved going to Radio Shack with him and as I got older. Now, people just throw away the busted electronics. Boy, I could use one now.

I bought a Pioneer stereo from Radio Shack in 2005 after my old one was drowned in the hurricane Katrina aftermath. It works perfectly, and I use it everyday. I miss having Radio Shack locations all around the New Orleans area, because they carry anything and everything electronic for the general public. I have to correct my comment, I was wrong about my home stereo being a Pioneer. It is a Panasonic SA-AK 330, and I bought it at Radio Shack like I said before. I have a Pioneer car stereo, and being the Spaz that I am I got the brand names mixed up. Please forgive my goofiness.

Getting into the cell phone business seemed smart at the time but was a big mistake in retrospect. Cell phone transactions can take a long time, 45 minutes or even an hour is not unusual, and if a clerk - who often was the only one on duty - was tied up in such a transaction he or she wouldn't be able to help any other customers.

I don't know how often my father went there, but I do remember that he built most of his ham radio equipment from parts taken from other, no-longer-working sets that he had all over his workshop.

My dad was a technophile who loved tinkering with radios. RadioShack was one of his favorite stores. I once gave him a RadioShack gift certificate for Father’s Day, and he was so excited about it that he used it right away.

I kind of miss working at a RadioShack repair center but I could see the writing on the wall when DVD players came out so cheap, they were disposable. And when they decide to be a cellphone seller and shoved aside the projects section. Turning curiosity explorers into mindless users.

I learned more about electronics from Radio Shack than anything today. There was nothing like talking to a live person, in person, who knew his stuff and I left the store with exactly what I wanted, and sometimes a little bit more. It beat every other place for anything electronic. I miss Radio Shack.

I worked there in the late 70's (Malone, NY). I remember we sold record players, CB radios, and "Pong"

I remember my dad had a radio shack catalogue in his shop when i was a kid, I would browse thru it and be amazed. The big thing then was jumbo LED's and they were pricey but i still wanted one. My brother had the Sears toy catalogue, I had Radio Shacks catalogue. I really miss that store.

That last scene took me a few seconds to get. Nice job LOL!

Radio Shack fueled imagination! I lost interest when Radio Shack tried to compete with other electronic stores that mass sold TVs and computers. They definitely didn't need to go that way. Stick with kits and parts and radio shack would be everywhere today. A very sad loss.

I miss this store for its audio/visual components such as BNC connectors, coaxial cables, antennas, headphones and other accessories.

I still have a Realistic Clarinette II stereo from 1974. It still works and has never been repaired. Great products! Thanks for posting

Im a record collector. I grew up on Radio Shack. It is my youth. It is also my adulthood. I collect electronics. I fix my stuff as well. Radio Shack was my teacher.

I loved radio shack I still have a multi band radio that i got about 23 years ago and a graphic equalizer about 30 years ago and they both still work perfectly

I loved Radio Shack and we used to have one here in our small town

I was a teenager in the 80's and I have many fond memories of my visits to Radio Shack but I also became painfully aware of why they failed.

I used to manage a RS back in the early 90's. Around that time is when RS started to fail. I worked in a smaller shop in my town and customer service is what kept us going. We had 3 stores here and my store is where the older came as we had more time to give them and we were not pushy when it came to selling stuff. It worked out for us until upper Management told me we could no longer solder wires for people ( cordless phone batteries ) and I wasn't to repair computers at my location. ( I was an Electronics major in College before RS and I fixed Computers ) That pretty much did my store in. I got replaced, that person did even worse, they got replaced, that person did much worse, and then the location was closed. Our mall was already dying but the mall RS rent was so high. They should have moved out years before and didn't and at the end RS was only maybe 1 of 5 or 6 store left in the mall. ( our mall is completely dead now ) When RS started pushing cell phones above all else, is when their fate was sealed. RS tried to sell the exact same stuff others did, but at higher prices. That never works. We got a big kickback for cell phone sales/contracts so I get why they wanted to sell them, but they bet it all on phones and lost. It is sad. I loved my time there and was a salesperson at a non corporate store a few years earlier. It was a good company to work for until they got greedy and got away from what made them successful. I have considered being a franchise store but their supply chain seems to be wishy washy at best so I could never guarantee what could be ordered. ( that was not the case in the 90's ) I loved going to RS as a kid and was damn proud to be a manager for one at age 20. I really wish it had worked out differently for them.

I operated very successful Radio Shacks in Fredericksburg, VA and up state Atlanta across from where the Braves play today in the 1980s. All Radio Shack brands. We serveiced everything we sold from Answering Machines to Remote Control Cars and we had our name on them like Optimus speakers We had district managers and 4 on hands on terrific Regional managers. Great manager meetings in Fort Worth, TX. A real feeling of honor. EVERYONE in the company was promoted from within. Then they started bringing outside bean counters and things like non Radio Shack Cellular Phones. Destroyed a totally good business. I had a lot of pride working for them and helped developed dozens. Made great money too!! Miss them....

In the early 80”s I walked into the local radio shack and bought a Panasonic Boom Box Radio/Tape Deck and it lasted 30 years! Thanks radio shack! I miss you✨

I did not even know that Radio Shack was still in business. I so remember going to Radio Shack with my Friends as a Teenager and buying records as much as CDS:)!! I know that the Radio Shack left my Mall in my Neighborhood sometime in the early 2000s. I do miss Radio Shack, it was a nice store to buy electronics as much as the latest Pop Rock hits on the Radio:)!!!

I had a TRS-80 Color Computer with the OS-9 operating system. That was the second of about a dozen or so computers I've owned. I was an electronics experimenter as well, so many parts came from The Shack

We had a Pharmacy/Radio Shack/Movie Rental in my small town. So you could buy a dvd player, rent a movie, while waiting for your prescriptions.

I never thought looking at pictures of a Radio Shack at Christmastime in a indoor mall would make my eyes go damp. I can't believe how much of my childhood doesn't exist anymore. It was all so so easy. It had all sort of come and gone.

The 150 in one electronics project kit was a great start for me learning electronics.

Over the years I bought dozens of items at Radio Shack, from CB radios, calculators, stereo systems, and so on. Plus an unknown number of cables and connectors that they always seemed to have in stock. They were friendly, helpful, and I really enjoyed shopping there.

I miss Radio Shack. The last one that I was in was in Windham, ME. about 3 years ago.

In the 60's and more of the 70's lived off building their kits as my aunt was instrumental in shaping my future career giving those to me every Christmas. Then Olson electronics and Lafayette electronics was in total delirium spending near what little bit of cash had on them all. Won't even get into how exciting the stereo gear was at that point to check out. I have a huge Olson electronics catalog (pdf)still love to look at all the time. Thanks for the memories.... Almost forgot and how could I Henry Radio! :)

My grandpa works on electronics but I don't believe he would go in a little store like this. He orders the parts he needs as far as I know off the internet.

Enjoyed thanks, Been a RS customer since the early 70s, Who remembers the battery of the month club? They sold these Grey 5 D battery flash lights ,They weren't great lights ,but worked and were affordable to a teenager. A lot of great memories. We still have a few open here. later from Texas.

Clever illumination of the sign at the end. Yes loved Radio Shack I went for patch cords to connect tape recorders together and try to copy cassettes, or edit them for my own mix tapes in the 80s. My local Fry's just closed too. 😢

I have one of the door chimes from a Radio shack entrances when the one near me closed down . It is a optical beam that uses the reflector from a bike to reflect the beam .

One of my all-time favorite stores back in the day. I got my first computer there - a TRS-80 Color Computer with 16k RAM and a tape drive. I read in Hot CoCo how to upgrade the RAM by piggybacking 16k chips so back to radio shack for some chips I went and did my first soldering job. They had everything I needed! Typed in a hex editor in BASIC and learned how to program after that.

I still have a radio shack catalog to remember, it helped us begining inventers do what is now nonexistent.

Their audio equipment was far better than the audio snobs realized. There was a time when Realistic was the #1 selling brand of loudspeakers on the market. Not the best, but a good value and decent quality. They also built most of the stereo receivers they sold during their peak era, and they were quite good. But the stereo market took a huge shift in the 1980's toward cheaper plastic stuff and they started the downward slide. Audio was out, the computer market was too fast to change for them to keep up., and cell phones ultimately killed them. If they stuck with being an electronic parts store on a smaller scale, I suspect they would still be alive today vs. what exists as a Radio Shack web site today.

Radio Shack was my home away from home during the 70's and 80's for me! Loved the new catalogs, battery of the month club and the free 5 cell flashlight

Back in the 70s I remember having gotten there a cassette recorder, a microphone, and a radio that mounted to the handlebars of my bike. I thought I was all the shit

My first job after graduating high school. The store was at the end of a 10 year lease and closed 5 months after I started working there.

I miss Radio Shack. That's where I got my 1st microphone stand & microphone. This Video is an Awesome Tribute. 👍🏻

I was a member of the battery of the month club, and back in the 70s you used to be able to buy the (Good) parts to build (Cool) projects, then thy stopped selling the (Good) parts and everything went downhill from there. Great memories.

I still have my 1978 Realistic receiver and 8 track player. Still working.

To be fair, it wasn't just competition from other stores that did in Radio Shack; it was their own bad management & diminishing selection. In their heyday, they had a huge variety of different kinds of electronics products, even the most obscure. You could pretty much find anything electronic there, no matter what it was. Similarly, if you had a question on anything electronics-related, you could usually get an intelligent, informed answer from one of the salespeople. But after a certain point (roughly after the turn of the millennia), they started having less & less and after a certain point, they didn't seem to have a damned thing in their stores anymore except RC toys and cell phones. And that was IT. And if you had a question about anything other than those two categories, you were out of luck. And the salespeople weren't overly-polite about telling you so, either. (Their attitude tended to be: "How dare you ask me a question about anything other than cell phones?!? How dare you?!?") After a certain point, if I needed some electronic part or component, I just went to Frys (also now out of business because of bad management) and just skipped Radio Shack altogether, because I knew there'd be a high likelihood they wouldn't have what I needed. So it came as no surprise at all to me when they finally did close their stores. By that point, I barely even noticed they were still around.

I do so miss this store. There was nothing else like it. A nerdy kids paradise. If you've never been in one when they were at their peak in the 80s early 90s then I can't explain it because it's just a name now. RIP The Real Sharper Image store as well.

Thanks Tandy for my great experience working as a teenager in one of your stores in Australia from 1983 to 1987.

Thank you so much Recollection Road for uploading this great video, I appreciate it!

Good afternoon. Great video, as always. I'm Brazilian, I really like this channel, because it brings good things from the past.

My favorite memory of Radio Shack is buying a little 40w stereo booster and some 6X9 3-way speakers to blast my stereo in my sweet, 1974 Pinto! They had some sweet KOSS headphones there as well!

I appreciate your production of these videos. Nice nostalgic pacing..like a Sunday afternoon.

It was always a "must go" for my brother and I any time my dad wanted to go to or stop in Radio Shack.

I bought my first computer from Radio Shack. It had 1mb of memory!! I expanded it to 8mb!! I really thought I was stylin' then!! 😄

Man I really miss Radio Shack!

I worked at Radio Shack in San Francisco for 6 years in the 80s. Had a great time being able to listen to the best radio station in the city and help customers (and I had plenty of repeat business from them!). My first stereo system was an all Realistic brand. Today I still have one that I purchased from that chain in the late 90 (all Optimus) long after I had left employment at Radio Shack.

Good memories of going with my dad there when I was a kid and him teaching me about electronics. Then as a teen getting my stereo, headphones, and other things there. Good memories.❤

Radio Shack was my favorite retail store as a kid. I loved to browse all the electronic part racks with the switches, relays, audio plugs and wire connections. I didn’t pay too much attention to their pre-built radios or tvs because you could get those everywhere else, like Sears or Grants. In 1978, I did my masters thesis project on the first generation TRS-80, which had a whopping 16K RAM. It was to be used in a small office, but it overheated a lot. So we had to bring it back to the store. The sales clerk was stunned to find out we wanted to keep the computer turned on for more than a hour or so per session. That eventually led to them putting in a cooling fan. We wont even talk about peripherals. Oh how things have changed.

I miss our local Radio Shack! They always had the fuse or small electronic part I needed. They got greedy and overpriced the hot items! People did not like this and went to the cheaper stores.

Boy do I wish they were still around

That “Adios” there at the end......subtle.

I loved going into Radio Shack as a kid. They had a police scanner on in the store. I got all my CB (with upper and lower sideband) and radio stuff there. I got an am/fm 8-track stereo receiver with two speakers for Christmas and I was in heaven. They also had the legendary TRS-computer there too. Radio Shack....A Tandy Corporation

We had a RS in town but the store personnel were VERY limited in electronic basics. Now, I too don’t even bother to “fix” broken electronics. Oh well, I have good soldering skills and a still working multimeter on the shelf above my workbench. oh those years, those golden years.

they always had the electronic part you needed at that time. sorely missed