Talk:Grandstand (game manufacturer)

Started this article today. I personally owned several of the Grandstand electronic products back in the eighties. However, finding further "authoratitve" sources on this isn't going to be easy, since the Grandstand label was active in the UK before the web took off.

This article links in with the previously existing "Astro Wars" article and I have also put in a few "Red Links" to articles that I hope will eventually be created for the more well known Grandstand products e.g. Munchman.

For the moment, I have marked the article as "Under Construction" whilst I assemble its initial structure. Benkid77 (talk) 17:33, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Removed "underconstruction" now that initial structure of article is in place. Needs more info adding, as it is tracked down. (Can anyone help??) Benkid77 (talk) 18:53, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Current deficiencies with this article

As stated, information about Grandstand is lacking and this article could do with more. I will list some issues that could be improved:-

Countries where Grandstand was active

The web reveals the company was active in the UK and New Zealand. I strongly suspect they also marketed items in Australia. I have found a Russian article stating that a particular Grandstand game console was sold in Australia. However, as that article is in the Russian language, it'd be better if possible to locate an Australian source to confirm this in English. Also, what about Ireland I wonder?

Was Grandstand truly a Manufacturer?

We know that Grandstand imported and rebadged equipment, but did they manufacture anything themsleves? I owned the "Grandstand Programmable Computer" video game console back in the eighties and the case and joysticks as released by Grandstand look to have a completely different form from foreign versions of the same underlying hardware. Grandstand also made customised instruction booklets and unique packaging. Are all of these things enough to qualify them as a "manufacturer", even if they never manufactured the underlying electronics? I think it probably does, but more info on this would be very helpful. Conversely, if Grandstand were not to be thought of of a manufacturer, then should the article title be changed to "Grandstand_(Game_Wholesaler)" or "Grandstand_(Electronics_Brand)" or something similar?

Lists of Games

Would this article be better served by lists or a table of all Grandstand products that can be found? At the moment it just refers to a small sample of their products which appeared relatively popular back in the day. Also, would it be useful to also list the names and manufacturers of the various foreign clones of each item where applicable?

Commercial Success

No information currently found on sales of Grandstand products. Whilst it seems that some of their video game consoles flopped, and some of the electronic games sold rather well, hard facts are missing at present. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Benkid77 (talk • contribs) 12:55, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

So, there sure is plenty of room for improvement here! (Benkid77) 91.85.186.158 (talk) 10:59, 4 May 2009 (UTC)