Phones and Phonies Commodore Shenanigans Through The Ages June 2026 Phoning it in? A year ago, in June 2025, youtuber Christian Simpson announced his acquisition of the Commodore brand. At the time, the business idea seemed to be to sub-license said brand to various independent hardware manufacturers. I speculated a bit about this back then, but there seems to have been a strategic pivot since, and no sub-licensing materialized. Instead, we've seen the launch of the Commodore 64 Ultimate. The Ultimate is a brand new C64-compatible computer built around already existing offerings in the form of a case, a keyboard and an FPGA hardware implementation. The Commodore-branded version brings them all together in a convenient bundle and sales have, at the time of writing, just about surpassed 26,000 units. This is well-deserved: It's a good product offered at an attractive price. Since the launch of the C64 Ultimate, there's been much speculation about what the next product would - or should - be. My view, then as now, is that the Commodore brand is at best a thin veneer, and that it's not required to create great new retro hardware or selling attractive machine bundles - as proven by the Commander X16, MEGA 65, Minimig, MiSTer FPGA, Retro Games' THEC64, and many more. The fun and magic we associate with these old machines is created by ourselves, not by a logo on their case. In my previous text about the brand acquisition, I mused about "the inevitable course of action to branch out into other ventures, diluting the brand and possibly alienating the core fanbase." This is exactly what seems to have happened with the latest product launch - a flip phone named Callback. The first ever Commodore branded phone, from 1983, was created to circumvent Canadian telecomms legislation. Full story (and image source) available here. The Callback is a modern-ish phone in a retro-ish flip phone case, with the unique selling point that social media and web browsing are completely disabled at the system level. No more Facebook, Google and Instagram in your pocket: a "digital detox" device with modest specs and a tiny screen, but a rather hefty introductory price of $500. The reception has been mixed, to say the least - but to understand why, we must take a stroll down memory lane. Commodore Shenanigans Through the Ages After Commodore went bust in 1994, German PC manufacturer ESCOM eventually won the bidding war over its remains. This made sense, since original Commodore-branded PC:s had been popular in Germany, where Commodore had also operated a large factory. ESCOM then expanded too rapidly, bought a chain of UK computer stores, and went bankrupt in 1996. At this point, the Commodore brand and other intellectual property went separate ways: Tulip Computers acquired the brand, and Gateway 2000 bought the rest of the intellectual property (including rights to the Amiga brand, operating system code, and much more). Since then, these subdivided IP estates have bounced around between various more or less incompetent and/or legally belligerent actors. Thus, before Simpson bought the Commodore brand, it was widely acknowledged that it had become something of a bad joke, recycled for a variety of purposes and slapped on everything from document shredders to MP3 players - some good, some bad. Below are a few of the more interesting ones: Commodore Multimedia Keyboard and Commodore MIDI Keyboard (1997?) These are possibly from the time when Tulip Computers owned the Commodore brand and put it on everything under the sun. Commodore 64 Web-IT (1998) An "appliance" computer for web surfing and email, woefully underpowered for the C64 emulator that was dutifully bundled along with it. It's claimed somewhere that ESCOM licensed the Commodore brand to the Web-IT manufacturer, but this doesn't add up with the timeline: ESCOM went bankrupt in 1996, and Tulip acquired the Commodore brand in 1997. C64 Direct-to-TV (2004) An ASIC implementation of a C64, stuck inside a joystick that connected directly to a TV set. It sold like hotcakes, not just because it offered affordable casual gaming, but also because passionate hardware engineer Jeri Ellsworth snuck some updated hardware features in there, along with solder points for floppy- and keyboard connectors. Appreciated by normies and die-hard fanatics alike, this is one of the few truly successful products sanctioned by previous brand holders. Commodore PCM30 (2005) This is a small media player with 30 gigs of storage, released during the heydays of DivX movie piracy. Various MP3 players were also launched around the same time. Whether or not these devices sold in any significant quantities is hard to say, but if they did, it's safe to assume it wasn't because of the brand. Commodore 64x PC (2011, 2021) A modern PC in a C64 case. These were originally launched in 2011, priced at $595 for the Intel Atom-based entry-level machine. There seems to have been quite a bit of interest in this initial model, with about 20,000 orders placed on its launch day. Ten years later, it was re-launched through a kickstarter campaign that reached its funding goal with 538 backers. This updated model is still available for purchase with about the same price tag as the 2011 one. These are machines with limited appeal. Hardcore C64 fans want the real deal (or, indeed, an Ultimate), people who settle for software emulation can run that for free on any PC they already own, and those who just want a family home computer won't go looking for a chunky 1980s-esque device running a small-time Linux distribution with window animations, translucency and pixelated fonts all dialed up to eleven. This is a purely aesthetic choice for people with ample amounts of both desk space and disposable income. Despite regularly hanging out with some of the most zealous and devoted Commodore fans and collectors in the world, I've never seen one of these in the wild. Commodore PET Phone (2015) A dime-a-dozen smartphone with a Commodore logo on the case, for good measure. Upon its release, the retrocomputing world reacted with a shrug, and people hunting for a good deal on a phone probably went looking elsewhere. This phone wasn't released by the holders of the official-lineage Commodore brand at the time, but rather a motley gang of Italians who seem to have duped the local authorities into letting them register the Commodore brand with a logo that differs slightly from the original one. They have since started selling Commodore-branded OEM laptops, accomplishing nothing but an even bigger shrug. Phone Home This brings us back to the present day, and the new Commodore Callback. Previous revivals of the Commodore brand have, as we've seen, often been crash-and-burn cash grabs, randomly throwing a logo on things and hoping it will stick. This has rightfully been met with ridicule from the C64 and Amiga fan base, but whatever people thought about them at the time, these antics have been easy to ignore. The new Commodore, however, has asked - nay, intensively begged - for the core fanbase to care. And that's put them in a bit of a pickle. Following up a success like the C64 Ultimate is hard. A next logical step might be to do something similar with the Amiga, but that platform is a harder nut to crack. The C64 was a relatively static architecture, whereas the Amiga was updated several times with new graphics chips and CPUs, making it harder to pick a model to reproduce. There are also various companies claiming ownership of the IP, and there's no apparent drop-in FPGA-based motherboard replacement for the original form factor, like the one that was used in the C64 Ultimate. These products are also natural one-time purchases with a fairly limited consumer base. Alas, once you've started a company and plowed a few millions of dollars into a brand acquisition, the moolah must flow. That means launching new products, even if they won't appease those who view themselves as the target audience - especially not if they're a gang of nitpicking computer nerds, and especially not if you've actively courted them with promises of not attempting any silly cash grabs, and extra especially not if you've created a barrage of commercials promising to revive their happy computer childhoods. Meme Marketing The situation is indeed exacerbated by the intense marketing of the new Commodore. Plenty of the old Commodore nomenklatura has been rustled up and put on display, including legendary Amiga engineers, old Commodore bosses, an actor from the geek cult TV show Silicon Valley, and even Commodore founder Jack Tramiel's son, Leonard Tramiel. The related Youtube videos and commercials really are something else. They feature not just clips from silly old Commodore ads, but also footage looking like private home videos, depicting 1980s high school life, and Christmas present unwrappings in the style of old home computer ads. There's also big flashing texts asking if we remember our first kiss, pull quotes from magazine articles about social media addiction, modern laptops displaying stressful cavalcades of AI slop and social media notifications, and close-ups of tear-filled eyes with accompanying prose intended to evoke powerful nostalgia. (Ironically, some of this footage looks AI generated.) Of course, we're then promised a panacea for all of this, if we just open our hearts and wallets. I personally loathe this type of advertising, and it automatically puts me on defense: There's something deeply unsettling - even sickening - about selling a supposed digital dopamine detox through the use of fast-paced Youtube videos that are so blatantly designed to tug on our heartstrings through rapid-fire emotional imagery. That, of course, doesn't mean they can't be effective. Thus, new Commodore has made a big fuss about how everything was supposed to be fundamentally different this time, only to launch a product that very much looks and feels just like the kind of silly old schemes everyone's grown all too tired of. It's a tricky position - though entirely one of new Commodore's own creation - and even if this turn of events somehow felt inevitable from the start, I can understand those who react with genuine surprise and disappointment. Flip Flop? I won't speculate about the viability of the Callback phone as a product. Perhaps it's capturing the essence of the present, and will prove itself a timely companion to the ongoing digital detox trend and discussions about age restrictions on social media. Perhaps it's an overpriced gimmick, and perhaps those who buy one will, after a while, miss their web browser and the ability to reliably access digital ID services, online banking, mobile payments and Slack group chats with friends. The hardware is probably fine: it's built around a MediaTek Helio G81 SoC, which seems competent enough. The price, on the other hand, is a possible pain point: At US$500 (that's including a waitlist discount), it's more than twice as expensive as an Honor X5c Plus - a smartphone based on the same chip. My personal take is that if you actually, deeply, want to quit social media but haven't already, is a $500 phone really going to help? I guess it's a sign of the times as good as any: why close down your Facebook account for free, when you can try to consume your way to a better life? Then again, there's always been a market for supposed quick fixes to hard life problems. What Would Commodore Do? It's important to remember that the original Commodore wasn't some cosy underdog company with a heart of gold. The engineers working there may have been passionate and highly competent people who loved cold beer and warm hardware, but at its height, Commodore was a multi-national, multi-billion dollar company run by famously ruthless businessmen. The fact that Thomas Rattigan (from PepsiCo) was hired as CEO after the departure of founder Jack Tramiel gives a fair hint that Commodore wasn't really an engineering-centric company: They were in the business of making money, not beloved childhood memories. Indeed, during its original 29-year run, Commodore put its name on everything from typewriters and filing cabinets to wristwatches, pocket calculators and 486 PCs (the nemesis of the Amiga if there ever was one). Thus, discussing if the Callback is a worthy legacy, and what the old Commodore would have done with it, is pointless: if there was a potential profit, there was an interest. Even the new Commodore, despite its promises, isn't run by a gang of fun-loving hardware gurus who party hard and work harder. Instead, it's quite predictably in the hands of people who want to make money, just like before, just like every other company out there. I'm sure there's something to be said here about sleeping dogs and dead horses. Personally, I'm perfectly content with the fact that my old Amigas still work fine, and that there are numerous products out there for replacing or mending the parts that that have broken or will break. Incidentally, none of them are Commodore branded.
