Collecting vintage electronics Tokai RA-801 transistor radio c.1960 - collectornet.net

In the years around 1960, the Japanese transistor radio was all the rage. The American brands first appeared in quantity in stores in the US in 1955 but they were costly. Typical prices ran from $50-$80, which is roughly $1000 in today’s money. So when the less expensive Japanese imports began to arrive, transistor radio sales -- already brisk -- exploded. Sony, Standard, Toshiba, Kobe Kokyo, and others lead the way, followed later by brands like this, Tokai.

Now I first heard of this brand on walkie-talkies. I bought one of those as a kid from a store called Simm's in my hometown. What a great store that was! It had old wood plank floors with giant white painted footprints on the floor leading to the various departments. It was all crammed in together and sort of dark. Imagine an entire Walmart in your garage.

I guess you would call Simm's a discounter. Or maybe a discount department store. You got an off-brand Japanese transistor radio, or walkie-talkie at a discounter like this. Big cities had lots of these kinds of stores, stocked with inexpensive imports. Smaller cities, like mine, would have just the one.

I saved my money to buy this model, but by the time I had enough saved and got to Simm's, this was the model they had. And this is that very walkie-talkie I bought at Simm's. Still has its thin gray pigskin case. Sony used cases like this for a few models of radios and walkie talkies too. I guess it’s pigskin, I don’t really know. It’s thin and it’s genuine leather of some kind.

And here's my walkie talkie without the case. You can see I take very good care of my toys. I remember it being around $31 with tax. That's why I just got the one. But other neighborhood kids got one too. We used them mostly to test them. "Can you hear me now?" was all our radio transmissions usually consisted of.

This is not the greatest looking radio of all time, I grant you that, but it was someone’s pride and joy back in the day. Back then, before talk radio ruined the a.m. band, out of this radio would come the ball game, the news on the top of the hour, and as they used to constantly remind us, much more music.

The radio came with a gold braid lanyard. And it features a low/high tone switch. As you can see, this one is wounded on the bottom. On the back the name is given as Tokai Wireless Company Ltd. Wireless. Now that tells me this is a company that goes way back. Or it’s a company that wants to make you think it goes way back. Looking them up, I can see that there is a Tokai Electronics that started in Japan in 1945. Well, that's a little too late to be honestly called wireless--or too early if you count cell phones, which were also called "wireless" for awhile. So I can't say for sure it's the same outfit--their website skips merrily over their history complete with zero graphics or any discussion of their early products. You're watching this video because you are into old things. Corporations, generally, aren't.

From this radio's outward appearance I would put it at maybe 1961 or 62. But from the looks of the chassis inside, I suppose it could be as early as 1960 or even 1959.

You can see this model also has the thin gray leather case I was yaking about. The boxes for Japanese transistor radios were generally much more showy than their American counterparts. The one here isn't even a particularly nice one, but still, it's lined in satin and has a ribbon to hold it open. The most stylish thing about any of this is that logo lettering. That is nice. Their little logo symbol is pretty crummy, but the lettering is truly first rate.

And here's a little Tokai ad showing that THEY were the one's who brought us this Honeytone G-607 model. And here's a color shot of that radio. Note the symbol above the speaker grille. It looks like a letter "T." My guess is that this IS a letter "T" and that it stands for Tokai. What the TKM stands for in this ad, I don't know. It seems they liked to like to throw letters around.

There's little doubt that it was Tokai who made this little treasure, the "official Los Angeles World Champions Dodgers" radio.

Tokai