Remember back when consumer electronics weren’t sexy? It’s hard to imagine a world where the Sony Walkman was state-of-the-art and, at best, was popular with a small subset of the world’s population. Back in the old days electronics were expensive, even in a relative sense, and this video harkens back to those dark days when men with long hair and creepy voices hawked cheap electronics on TV.

And think about it: as Retrothing points out, this guy services what he sells. Try dropping off your HTC Hero at Best Buy. They’ll probably detain you and search your wallet. While I don’t miss scamsters like Crazy Eddie, I do miss the days when every CE release didn’t have to be overhyped like a blockbuster movie.

Giz has some great videos from Crazy Eddie, the guy who went nuts in New York and New England back in the 70s and 80s, selling home appliances and CE to a trendy and naive audience.

It’s interesting to note that Crazy Eddie could have been lying about his low-low prices. In an era where the information disparity between consumer and salesperson was amazingly high, I doubt he had better deals than most. But like all great media, he milked the immediacy and memorability of the insane to his own marketing ends.

Eddie escaped to Israel after dumping his stock and quitting the company as it fell into a death spiral. Today Eddie is a free man after doing two years on an eight year sentence.

Anyone have any particularly moving Crazy Eddie stories?