When you think about it, this makes a fair bit of sense when you look at the market in 1982.
This would be the high point of the boom box period, with the market being massively
competitive. The S90 is a massively high end and expensive box, it would've cost Toshiba
a lot money to make it. And if you look at it it's got a very late 70s look to it, especially the
green tinged glass which was a hallmark of a lot of components from the late 70s, not to mention
their over the top ADRES noise reduction system, plus the big needle meter itself.
Maybe this was considered an unpopular design for the west and Toshiba went back
to the drawing board and came up with a cheaper and far more street-looking box for the western
markets where it could compete more with other mid priced boomboxes. If you look at the ranges
in 1982 there were very, very few all black boxes. The BomBeat40 on the same shelf as the ranges
from Sharp, Hitachi, Panasonic, Sanyo, et al would really stand out.
Of course this is all just my thoughts on the matter, and I've certainly got no definitive proof about any
of this, but it could be the BomBeat40 was the first real 'black box' ghettoblaster that was then the inspiration
in later years from the likes of Lasonic and such.
It's something to think about anyway, especially given how comepetitive the market was back then and how
quickly companies would need to have models of radios out to separate themselves from all the others
on display.
None of this gives any ideas as to why they are so bloody rare though. But, with the BomBeat40 and S90
being Toshiba's biggest onepiecers, one just needs to look at their rarity compared to the WX-1 range, which
was definitely in far more plentiful supply. Perhaps Toshiba saw the future being in threepiece radios and
shifted their production focus on these?
We may never get any kinds of answers about this, but I do like to ruminate about the possibilities.
Rock On.