My first thought about the pocket transistor radio ad was a pack of cigarettes too! But as Fizzy mentioned, we were bombarded by cigarette ads in the 1960s. Remember the Joe Camel cartoon, the mascot for Camel cigarettes?

I had at least one of those pocket transistor AM radios. But what I remember most was all the bakelite, tube AM tabletop radios we had in the house. Just like the tube TV sets, they took a while to warm up then heated the room with their warmth!



Someone mentioned a tube AM radio in their car. I remember helping dad work on his radio. We uninstalled it from the dash, and wow that thing was big and heavy. It was box shaped and I think probably a good 10"x10"x10" in size. It was like an iceberg in that you only saw the dials and buttons poking out of the dash. but those big old Detroit monsters we called cars were big enough to conceal the rest of the radio.

And notice that I'm only mentioning AM. I grew up near Austin, TX. FM was not very prevalent. Most radios well into the 1960s were mono only and AM only in our region. And most TVs were VHF only (channels 1-13). I remember having to get a converter box to receive our first UHF station (channels 14-83 or so). And I still remember watching the Indian test pattern on early morning TV stations while not so patiently awaiting the start of Saturday morning cartoons! TV stations in Austin went off the air around midnight and came back on around 6:00am. The times they have definitely changed.