The Aquarius computer is another example of a gamming machine
company trying to break into the Home Computer Market.
As with the
Coleco Company, Mattel saw a booming computer market and felt that they
too should have a computer in their product lineup. But unlike Coleco
they didn't want to develop their own system. They wanted a ready made
one and found one in Radofin Electronics. Radofin had a computer based
on the Zilog Z80 8-bit processor that they were developing and looking
for a major company to distribute it. It was released under the Mattel
label and named Aquarius.
The public hated it.
It had a terrible keyboard, practically no user RAM, very limited
graphics, and poor sound capabilities. It was released with a cassette
drive, a printer, and an expansion unit with 2 game controllers.
Unfortunately,
Mattel would not have time to overcome the bad reviews and dismal sales,
because 1983 was the year the bottom dropped out of the video game
business. Within months of the release of the Aquarius, Mattel was
reeling in financial distress. In fact Mattel was close to bankruptcy
and with their core business in jeopardy and they had to cut costs. So
in the fall of 1983 Mattel got out of the computer business.
I believe Aquarius
was as much or more a victim of the video game crash of 1983 than
a poorly designed computer because even with all of its faults it could
have been fixed in time. But time was the one commodity Mattel did not
have. The Aquarius was only on the market for about 8 months and its
hard to say if it would have found a niche in the Home Computer Market
if Mattel would have been able to keep the Aquarius line alive.
