Gallery: Tech Time Warp of the Week: Rad Ads for Ginormous '80s Cellphones
01On the Beach
The cellphone turned 40 this week. And it's a remarkable achievement. Really. It is. Even its inventor, Martin Cooper, thought that it would [never beat out the landline.](http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/04/03/cell_phones_40th_birthday_skeptics_made_fun_of_first_mobile_phone.html) It may be hard to remember this in 2013, but when the cellphone was first introduced, it was a little bit like Google Glass -- a cutting-edge device that let you do amazing things but also immediately branded you as a goofball to the vast throngs of the uninitiated. In the '80s, cellphones weren't small devices. They were ginormous. That's why it's so fun to take a trip back to the early '80s, when the world's marketers started advertising the early cellphones. They were undeterred by the goofiness. As you can see in the videos above, they happily cranked out ads showing people happily carting these monstrosities anywhere and everywhere. The vision of the way cellphones will be used is actually spot on. It's just the size of the devices that makes these ads ridiculous by our standards today. Ok, not just that. There's also the music and the hair and the clothes. Still, we have to salute them. Without these brave ads, the cellphone's 40th birthday party wouldn't be nearly as fun. Above: ------ The Radio Shack video above is the best of the bunch because everyone plays things completely straight, no matter how impossibly goofy they look. Whether they're hopping off a lifeguard stand at the beach, planning a wedding, sprinting off to work, or speeding through motor boat froth, they're more than happy too can lug around one of those massive doorstops.
02Give Me a Honk Sometime
In 2013, it might seem like an advertisement for someone to break into you car, but GE offered a cellphone that came with a "horn alert" option. This convenient feature could set your horn blaring and headlights flashing anytime someone called you -- the perfect way of letting the whole neighborhood know that you owned a cellphone. We like the *2001: A Space Odyssey/Thus Spake Zarathustra* music in this ad, although 20 years later the clunky GE phone seems closer to an ape's bone than a piece of high tech gear.
03Dinner for Three
If you think the image of someone yammering away on a cellphone during a quiet dinner might have frightened people back in the 1980s, think again. In this Motorola promotional film, it's actually part of the appeal. We can't tell if the guy in this clip is supposed to be sitting in stunned silence, or -- more likely -- yammering away on a two-pound brick of his own.
04Sticker Shock
In this ad, Radio Shack promises "a new generation of affordable cellular phones at an incredible price breakthrough." They were right. It's a pretty incredible price.
05The Tycoon
Radio Shack again. This time, it takes aim at on both the obnoxious realtor and the pre-teen geek demographic -- and totally nails them.
06Hypnotize
This is the sexiest 1980s cellphone ad we've seen. It's got everything: a speedboat, a jeep speeding around, sheep. The ending is so satisfyingly romantic that we even forgive this couple for forgetting about their kid in the boat. Biggie totally ripped this off years later with [Hypnotize.](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=glEiPXAYE-U#!)
07Dr. Who
If Dr. Who eerily whispering away in the middle of a 2,000 year-old Roman ruin can't sell cellphones, what can? In this 1985 ad for British teleco Cellnet, Tom Baker (aka the jelly baby chomping Dr. Who with the long scarf) whispers his cellphone pitch from the middle of the Roman theater in St. Albans. "Standing here today in that same theater, your British Telecom Cellnet phone will carry your whisper to your bank manager, your office, your brother in Australia," he whispers.
