Cool Silvertone color television NBC Peacock sign on ebay
 

Has anyone here seen one of these signs before?

Its unusual because its for Silvertone.

I am guessing that originally there was an animation unit in the assembly behind it to give the peacocks feathers a continuously changing rainbow of color.

That old Peacock design was sure cool.


http://cgi.ebay.com/VINTAGE-SILVERTO...item33646f1e57

I don't think it's complete. Looks to me like one of the ones that had motorized color changing feathers for the peacock, so this would only have been the front of the sign?

Yes,thats what I thought too.

Me too, you could make a color wheel for it though, or make one with LED's.

Does anyone here have one thats complete in their collection?
It sure would be interesting to see it.

I wonder if the animation unit was disk shaped like a color wheel or if it was a cylinder sheet type,the disk would make more sense,but the sign itself is square not round.

I'd love to have one of them!

I bet even this front glass is going to go for a fair amount.

Even if you just reverse painted the colors on the back side it would look pretty cool.

I never saw this before, and I am amazed that they did such an NBC copycat item - wonder if they licensed it, or waited for the NBC/RCA lawyers to take them to court?

Taking a little larger view, wouldn't promoting color be good for everyone's business? Licensing seems sensible in a context where you want to grow the market, just like earlier B/W days when RCA licensed the 630TS chassis to all comers.

Phil Nelson

Well sure, but it was HIGHLY unusual for any company to publicly mimic another brand (or be allowed to do so). Similar (or identical) chassis inside the cabinet, sure, but never similar logos. The odd thing about this is that it is slightly different from the NBC Peacock, and uses almost the Disney title but does not give credit to the Disney show per se. It would be MUCH more likely to see a newspaper ad saying "See all the new color shows including Disney's Wonderful World of Color." I can think of an explanation for the Disney collision, which is that maybe Sears thought up this phrase before Disney used it, but it's so close, that's a long reach.

RCA seemed pretty eager to help get other companies into the color TV business; this sign may be old enough that the Silvertone sets were being built by RCA-at the very least, they would have been RCA clones (Warwick built?) using RCA picture tubes and lots of other off-the-shelf RCA parts. Sears might have also been advertising on enough NBC shows to get some pull?

It would be neat to rig this up with a color wheel. Nice item.

It would be interesting to learn the history behind it.

I was surprised to see a sign like this for Silvertone too.

It does have the NBC peacock logo and then there is the play on words with "wonderfull world of color television" so it's kind of obvious,I doubt they would have tried to get away with it.

also the peacock logo seems dead on,that would have been blatant copyright infrigement.

The real big question regarding this Silvertone peacock sign is how many of us here are quietly waiting until the last minute to bid in an attempt to lull others into a false sense of security?:scratch2:

I know I'd never do anything like that!:D

Nope, look again - every element has been changed somewhat - the peacock's neck has been curved, its tail is shortened, and the rounded "eyes" at the tips of the feathers have been squashed into ovals.

Actually, the most likely is that they consulted with RCA/NBC and got agreement that their ad sign could allude strongly to the NBC programming, but had to be modified so that they were not applying the NBC and RCA brands to their TVs. That decision could be something that both sides would prefer - Sears not wanting to say that their sets were "RCA inside" and RCA wanting to preserve their marks for their own products while promoting color TV in general. With such an agreement, lawsuits were avoided, which I still think RCA would have pursued if Sears or anyone else displayed this to the public without consulting.

"old tv nut"

Youre right,it is very slightly revised,I guess I should have chosen my words more carefully,what I meant was that there was no mistaking it for anything other than the NBC peacock,especially with the further "world of color" association.
I have seen legitimate ads for cars,electronic,etc. where the logo was slightly different because the artists were sloppy and didn't pay close attention to each little detail.

I'm not saying this Peacock was definetly authorized by NBC,but it's too close in my opinion,but who knows.

It's doubtfull they would have risked it without permission.

Sid & Marty Kroft succesfully won a lawsuit against McDonalds arguing that McDonalds had copied the "look and feel" of McDonaldland and it's characters from H.R. Pufnstuf,which they obviously had,but the characters were vastly different compared to Pufnstuf,certainly much more altered than this Peacock logo.

By the way,"H.R." stood for hand rolled.

"H.R. Punstuf,whose your friend when things get rough,H.R. Pufnstuf,you can't do a little cause you can't do enough":D

The Krofts sure produced some bizzare shows,"lidsville" has to be the strangest of the lot and certainly one of the wierdest intros ever for a childrens show.

Those guys were potheads for sure.