Argos 1985

For those nerds amongst us someone has posted the 1985 Argos catalogue on Flickr which lists, amongst other things, an ME Super. The only other 35mm SLR listed is the Ricoh KR10 Super. I particularly like the fetching photographers waistcoat...

K.

CORRECTION: Other SLRs are listed on subsequent pages...

The link was posted on the Manual Focus Lenses forum...

That guy in the waistcoat looks like a REAL Pentaxophile

He also looks not unlike Gordon Freeman from the Half Life games. Just add crowbar...

I remember Argos selling multipacks of film, and those rectangular chocolate-bar shaped 110 cameras. Not convinced the Fiat offered as a prize with something-or-other amongst the photography listings will have lasted quite as well as the ME Super though!

I also have a scary number of the Lego sets shown on later pages (the only childhood toys I've hung onto, because Lego is always cool)...

What a cool link! the photo waistcoat looks (ahem) timeless... My first camera was a choccy bar style Halina which retracted at one end (it's at the bottom of the page of them in the catalogue) - I think I still have it somewhere. I probably got it for christmas in 1985 thinking about it. I remember I also used to REALLY want an Olympus XA2/A11. Ah, sweet nostalgia....

Regards

Interesting photo.... the ME Super is actually supplied with
the 50mm 'A' series f/1.7 lens? £190 with flash and bag?

Nice find Kris! The real bargain was on the following page - Praktica MTL5 outfit with 50mm Tessar, 35mm Flektogon and 135mm Sonnar for only £110. A rare example of something from Argos actually appreciating in value!

Someone on the other forum noted the Flek... and I know how you feel about Sonnars!

K.

I noticed that too. This must have been at the time of the changeover to A series lenses and bodies, presumably surplus ME Supers were being attached to the new lenses and sold via Argos - possibly as a way of shifting old stock before the Super A/Program A hit the market?

I know the original 3 K series bodies (and of course a lot of K1000s) were sold with M series lenses after K series production finished, presumably for the same reason.

Actually the A series bodies came and went while the ME Super remained in production:

ME Super 1980--1986
Super A 1983--1985
Program A 1984--"unknown"
A3/A3000 1984--1985

Information from Bojidar Dimitrov's site.

K.

Thanks for this post Kris ! For some reason the photo of the guy in the photo vest cracks me up everytime I look at it

Cheers,

/Ian

It's also interesting to see how much slower things changed then. My brother was born in 1987 and I recognise a lot of the baby toys there as things he had, so they clearly didn't change the selections as often as they do now.

According to the BBC an average wage in 1985 would have been £8,890, to give an idea of the real cost of the contents of the catalogue compared to now.