Strath posted some awesome advertising images for the Philco Hip Pocket records today.
Hip Pocket Records were a small 3.5" flexidisc intended for teenagers to carry a few in their back pocket in the late 1960's. Small, inexpensive, and somewhat less fragile than a normal 7" 45RPM single, you can see why they thought it was a good idea at the time. I have a few floating around in my collection, the envelope is very similar to the ones seeds come in.
Here is more on WIKI...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PocketDisc
"The disks were sold in vending machines for 50 cents or counter displays at stores for 49 cents and could hold a capacity of about 3.5 minutes of music...They played at 33RPM."
Also more from this informative article by Steve Seymour,
"The product itself, sometimes referred to as a flexi-disc, was packaged in a 5 x 6.25 inch envelope featuring a color photograph of the artist, similar in concept to the picture sleeves designed to display 45 rpm records. However, the customer had to tear open the paper packaging to retrieve the disc. This wasn't seen as a problem since the product's main selling point was that it was disposable."
Steve quotes them as being sold for 69 cents.
There was a similar competitor version made by Americom called "Pocket Discs" that were sold in vending machines as seen here. Awesome.
Too bad no one really makes flexidiscs any more, I have looked around for a factory (passively mind you) for a few years now.
Oh well.
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