Coleco

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Much like Bandai, you can think of Coleco primarily as a toy company with many different product lines. You might not realize that Coleco is the company that released the insanely popular Cabbage Patch dolls as well as that creepy little plush ALF dude. Oddly enough Coleco started out as a shoe leather manufacturer. In fact, the name Coleco can be broken up into three parts, CO-LE-CO, which would be short for the original name, Connecticut Leather Company. I know, weird, right?

Like other toy companies, Coleco tried its hand in the video game system and home computing arena. It had some hits (TelStar and ColecoVision), some misses (Adam) and a few "in betweens" (misc. handhelds). In addition to their own games Coleco came out with a line of games for the Atari 2600 and even went so far as to make the Gemini game console which was essentially a replica of Atari's 2600 console. Yes, there was a court battle and no, Atari didn't win.

The loss of Coleco was pretty much a numbers thing. They had some pretty awesome luck that put them in a good position to launch the ColecoVision but started to fall apart when their idea of an answer to the "home computing craze" was the Adam home computer. From what I gather the Adam basically it blew chunks and was known for being a faulty P.O.S. Adam is actually the reason Coleco exited the world of electronics. (And they say Eve is the bad one.)

Unfortunately the massive losses from the Adam debacle were more than any Cabbage Patch phenomenon or ALF frenzy could recoup. Coleco went "banko" in 1998 selling off anything that would fetch a price. Hasbro owned Coleco's remaining assets for a while (just like they did with Atari) but has since sold it all to someone else (again, just like they did with Atari).

Coleco's new owner is trying to get back in the game (pardon the pun) by bringing you the Coleco Sonic. We'll see how far things go.