Originally posted by climbmountainway This was when Pentax was one of the 'Big 5', NIkon, Canon, Pentax, Minolta, and Olympus. Marketing placement in stores was defined by a complete and expansive interchangeable gear system display.approach.
Of those big five, Minolta have gone (arguably replaced by Sony) and Olympus might be on their way
. Yet some of the smaller guys have survived: Leica, Fuji. Meanwhile Panasonic arrived. It seems that younger generations are more attracted to "Jack-of-All-Trades" consumer brands like Sony and Panasonic than to long established specialist companies like Olympus and Pentax, which is sad, and also worrying as the Jack-of-All-Trade guys could dump cameras at the drop of a hat and switch to something else that is now more profitable and fashionable in the consumer market.
One characteristic of those stores, and essential for sales, was A4 sized multi-page glossy handouts on cameras and other gear. They were beautifully produced and all together must have cost the camera companies a fortune. I still have many, not just of Pentax, and I have been copying some today with a view to putting them on-line in some way, perhaps I will make a website with PDFs. Here is the front of one of those handouts, from around 1980: