This JVC is another typical ghettoblaster for 1985. They system offers four-band tuner (AM, FM, SW1 and SW2) a fine tuning knob for shortwave, five-band graphic equalizer, all-silver plastic chassis. These portable stereos often featured shortwave. We wonder how how the incidence of boombox multi-band tuning started among these machines–were they included for the European, Asian and other SWL markets? Perhaps the goal was to include absolutely every feature possible to meet market demands for visually complicated portables.

Big bucks, no whammys! The star of America’s favorite 1980s game show Press Your Luck breakdances to a three-speaker boombox.

No, that’s not a CD player, it’s a turntable. That’s right, this time Sharp pushes the envelope by including a cassette drive and side-loading turntable in their VZ-2000. Wonderful array of features–we particularly like the left-right slide controls for audio controls.

We apologize for the poor shot of this Casio KX-101, but pictures of this are hard to come by. Released in 1984, the KX-101 was one of two portable stereos that included a synthesizer keyboard. The other was also by Casio, released a year later (CK-200) and it featured nearly everything the KX-101 did, including shortwave. Here’s a photo from an advertisement showing the portable stereo-keyboard in action.

Leave it to Sony for creative styling in a high-quality, feature-packed boombox. We can spot nearly every color of the rainbow on this CFS-99.

You may have seen portable stereos including little black and white televisions before, but this is one of the originals. Sharps TVMate 3000 offers AM & FM reception, but also includes VHF and UHF tuning for its little 3″ television.

A unique offering in 1983 from Panasonic. Logic controls, detachable speakers and a slim design certainly look cool here, but this styling was atypical for the period–this design became the norm in the latter half of the decade.

Sony thought of it first, but Radio Shack followed shortly after in 1984 with this pitiful little thing–a hybrid Walkman portable stereo. It’s hard to define this as a “boombox” or “ghettoblaster” but it was a indicator of things to come. Several brands emerged in later years with boomboxes that included removeable walkmans, including JVC, Hitachi and Yorx.

A common scene in urban and suburban areas alike back in 1984: a breakdancer performing on a sheet of cardboard to beats thumping from a nearby stereo. Captured from the 1984 film Breakin’.

Hitachi wows us with this model–the TRK-8600. We’re guessing this was released sometime in 1981 or 1982. Unusual color scheme–it appears to have a copper-colored finish around the controls. What would you say if we told you this baby is still available today? Okay, browse here and take a look. UPDATE: Bad news, it’s sold out.