Greetings and welcome to LGR Oddware,where we're taking a look at hardware and software that is odd, forgotten, and
obsolete. Like this right here, this is the Avon Beauty Vision Computer from the
80s. It's very red but it's all packed up in this thing here. And it comes with
this that you're supposed to...
This is... Just, this is weird, let's take a look at it. This is the Avon Beauty Vision Personal Color Computer, released in 1988 or thereabouts. And it may look like a suitcase but check this
out.
Yeah man. Not only does it provide vision
for your beauty but you get a proper 1980s PC-compatible computer inside
capable of running MS-DOS. I didn't even know this existed until I was browsing
eBay one late night a year or two ago, just looking for old laptops and other
weird tech crap to cover on LGR. And then I saw this thing show up and I had to
have it.
It only cost me 50 bucks to grab this brand new unit but as for what it
cost originally in 1988, I have no clue. Because unlike most things that I cover
on oddware this was not sold directly to consumers. But instead was used by
representatives of Avon Products to recommend and sell cosmetics. And for any of the uninitiated among you, a key part of Avon's business model, then and now, is
to advertise and sell its beauty, household, and personal care products
through multi-level marketing.
Mmm fun. Anyway in the late 80s that typically
meant that a so-called "Avon Lady" would set a time in place for an event, often
at someone's home or at a public meeting space of some kind, and then potential
customers would gather in one spot to have the representative demonstrate a
bunch of creams and serums and all that kind of stuff before pressuring everyone
to buy a bunch of things because the rep needs that sweet Avon money. And yeah
there's recruitment involved and a whole bunch of other things about Avon's
business practices we're not gonna go into here, we're just gonna talk about
the Beauty Vision Computer. And really the whole idea behind this was to
enhance the appeal of these direct sales meetings by
saying "hey look, it's the 80s and we've got a computer!" And for a few years they
were pushing this thing quite a bit, especially in magazines like
Cosmopolitan, Ebony, Savvy, pretty much anywhere that
you might find a potential Avon customer.
Like this January 1989 issue of Good
Housekeeping. Forgive the visual quality here, this was printed out on a less than
brand-new microfiche machine. This little tidbit right here and many others like
it were found in all kinds of magazines, saying stuff like "what can the latest
computer know-how do for you? Beautiful things! Consider Avon's Beauty Vision
system which, via a unique color analyzer, scientifically reads your skin tone to
find out which makeup shades look best on your face. And it's free to use! With a
5 dollar makeup purchase." So yeah, while I don't know how much the actual whole
unit itself cost, it apparently cost five bucks to get your face blasted with
light.
So the way that the Beauty Vision Computer worked, supposedly, is that it
made use of an optical skin tone analyzer, which is this unnervingly
medical-looking handheld device right here. Now you're supposed to point the
business end of this at your face and it'll flash your skin with bright light
to provide a computerized analysis of your skin tone. Seems legit. It then sends
whatever it's gathered in terms of information to the built-in computer
here.
Which as far as I can tell is a modified Toshiba T1000 laptop from 1987.
They've pretty much just put it in a new case and covered up the function key row
with this plastic barrier on top. And yeah, once you've done the skin tone
analyzer functionality thing it'll then print out a list of suggested cosmetics
and apparel and all sorts of other stuff through the built-in thermal printer
back here, which is one like you'd find on a cash register's receipt printer. Hehe, I
love how gimmicky this is! Anyway let's take a look at the rest of the machine
because you get a bunch of stuff in here. Like this comprehensive color swatch
backing on the lid of the unit showing all the potential Avon options it might
recommend to you based on your skin tone.
And it's divided up into four
categories: cool, warm, ultra warm, and ultra cool. And then you get the very
glossy Avon Beauty Vision Operations Card, which provides a guide to
operations on a card. And it also happens to hide the software for the computer
underneath on a 720 kilobyte three-and-a-half inch floppy disk. The
card folds out to reveal all the information that you really need, mostly
how to turn it on, print stuff out, and troubleshoot basic problems like jammed
paper.
It doesn't really need much more than this seeing as the software itself
holds your hand through pretty much every step of the process, which we'll
see in just a moment. And speaking of the software this is it right here on
this disk! It just inserts on the right hand side down here right next to the
'gamma ray gun' and some ventilation slots. And at this point you're ready to go! You
just plug it in and turn it on, with the power cord plugging into the top-right
corner next to the power button and reset switch. And I quite like how the
power cable neatly tucks away underneath this plastic door, it's all quite tidy
and pleasant and not really getting in the way.
Which I guess is a good thing
in the situation's this might be used in. So yeah let's go ahead and get to
beautifying ourselves with computers! Okay everything is plugged in ready to
go, disk is inserted let's turn it on. And straight away we're getting a RAM test
and being a T1000 it will go up to the 512 kilobytes that these things came
with from Toshiba. Success! My apologies for the brightness/contrast here, it's
not great to me in person either.
There are no brightness/contrast controls here,
at least not anymore. I'm assuming they have all been covered up by the case
that it's housed in. And yes there we go, we start up with the Avon Beauty Vision
Personal Color Computer logo loading directly from this bootable floppy disk.
And once it gets to this point you can start hearing the skin sensor gun-thing
making some slightly unnerving sounds, very high-pitched... [Slight unnerving high-pitch whining and clicking noises] And it seems to be drawing some power
too because it actually dims the screen a little bit every time it makes that
sound.
I'm assuming this is some sort of startup calibration for the thing
because it is flashing the light every time it makes that little sound. And you
can see in here where the end of the device is stored there's this sort of
light skin-colored fleshy tone that it's looking at. So I'm assuming that maybe it
thinks that's the neutral skin tone? I don't know I'm just guessing. Now that
it's done making concerning noises we can press ENTER and get to enter today's
date: April 23rd, 2018...
And it is not Y2K-compatible! I will just put... Heck, we
can put anything. It's Christmas! 1986, My first Christmas. Well it won't
take that either because it's before '89? You particular piece of junk.
Let's put
the example year in, will it take that? Okay fine.
"Representative information: what language do you prefer, English or Spanish?" I will
take English. Ikay it's doing the printer stuff now.
Just printed a test print, just the whole alphabet over there. "Press ENTER to
continue." "Calibration check: please make sure the
skin tone analyzer is firmly placed in its cradle," which I mean I thought we
already did this when it started up. But it's doing that again, so.
You can
see the screen dimming every time. Oh good the anal-yzer is functioning! So
let's see here, "enter the following representative information where
indicated." So this is where I was to, like, say, if I was an Avon representative I
would put in my information, not the customer. So we're gonna put "LGR." And
my phone number is three three three seven seven seven four four four four--no
it's not but that will work. I don't know I'm just making crap up here, because
obviously I'm not an Avon representative.
In case you're not aware, disclaimer. I am
now ready to begin my first consultation! [PC speaker music plays] Yeah man.
There's a theme song. "In what language would you like your consultation," well,
English again because you know. All right now we're selecting the "consultation of
your choice by typing in the correct number." So personal color, wardrobe and cosmetic
coordination, skin care consultation, fragrance consultation, representative
training information.
I'm curious about the training information so let's see
here. We have consultation steps, team selling approach. I mean sure, let's just
go through the steps, let's see what these are. What does this software say we
should do to consult myself? "Welcome customers to the Avon Beauty Vision
Personal Color consultation! Introduce yourself to the selling team, say: [clears throat]
Avon is pleased to offer a scientifically based color computer that gives you
personalized makeup color advice through skin tone analysis!" Ah sure whatever
man.
"Mention that the analyzer will take camera-like flashes to determine
skin tone." And these are the things so yeah, let's just do a personal color
consultation because I want to know what my personal color is. "Welcome to your
personal color consul-nyeh thing! Enter your first and last name where indicated."
So this is where the potential customer comes into play. So our customer is going to be myself but we're just gonna put Duke
Nukem because... I think that's a thing to do.
And phone number whatever. "I don't
even have a phone!" 90210, I. Don't know let's just get some stuff in
here, so. "Please enter your age by typing in the correct number," put number four.
"You can choose male or female," so yes this does work by design with male and
female customers.
So we'll just go with mail because I'm gonna be scanning
myself here. "Skin Cleansing instructions: skin must be cleansed even if you were
not wearing makeup. Use accolade toner and cotton ball to cleanse the right
cheek area." I dunno, I don't have that. So clean your friggin face basically.
So here is
the color analysis, which is a three-step process starting with moving the skin
tone analyzer from the cradle, holding it flush against your right cheek and
pressing enter. [Blop] [presses enter, followed by faint analyzer noises] Lift the analyzer away from your cheek
for a few seconds then place it back on your right cheek. [Presses enter, contemplates life] And yeah we just keep
doing this repeatedly for like, half a dozen times. "Your skin tone measurement
is complete! Replace it in its cradle." Okay! [Beep boop boop beep beep boop beep] [boop beep beep boop boop beep] [chuckling, PC speaker music plays] I love that silly little process.
"Boop boop boop beep boop! Computers! The 80s! Wow!" Anyway my skin has pink undertones. Yes.
Yes it does. Admittedly not the most thorough set of testing but hey, at least
it got that right. My color category is ultra cool.
The color group that most
naturally compliments my skin tone is clear and vibrant. I'm glad to know this. [Printer noises occur] And it's printing out mah sterf. So at
this point it's back to the representative and we can press C for a
printout copy.
[Printer prints a printout copy print] [PC speaker music plays again] And that's pretty much it. Uhh, we've got [rip] Aw no I ripped off the wrong part [rips] So this part right here that it printed out
would go to the customer. Got some information and just says your skin tone
color category is ultra cool. It's pretty vague.
I guess you're just supposed to
use that whole list of stuff up there and you now go further with the rep at
this point. And then here is what the representative gets, which is just the
basic information of the customer and then you can put in your own notes and
stuff there if you want to. But yeah, that's mostly what you do with this
thing. And the other stuff though is kind of interesting like this fragrance
consultation.
"We examine your fragrance needs for day, night and special
occasions. Let's begin with daytime," ooh I'm intrigued. "The majority of my time
during the day is spent on these things." So yeah it just is like a quiz that
you'd find on Facebook or some crap. And here you go, "my personal style is very
alluring and sultry." And I mostly enjoy a woodgrain scent.
"The personal feeling I
would like to create in the evening is..." [Chuckling] I'm romantic? I'll go with the wood again. "Special occasions for me are..." Anniversary, romantic, church,
community, social organizations, entertaining in my home, yes. So based on
that personality quiz and preference I. Should go with the breathless soft musk
and evening should be night magic and soft musk and special occasions should
be Imari, ooh.
I don't know what any of those smell like but uh. We've got another
printout going here which I think, yeah. So the printer just just stopped working. Oh
there we go.
[The now-working printer is working at printing again] This is quite a bit more substantial
printout for some of these other things here. This one in particular is kind of
ridiculous, actually. So yeah look at this, we start getting into like, CVS receipt
territory with some of these things. I mean look at that, it's quite in-depth, I
got a six step process right there over my fragrance layering.
Bathing with
scented soap, refresh with body splash, and spraying like what is all this?
It's a lot of information for me to make myself smell good. And yeah I mean that's
pretty much it. About the only other thing that I kind of wanted to mention
that I've noticed on here that can be a bit iffy... They're having a customer do all
these things like, I'm typing in your names and you go through the entire
process and look here's my phone number.
But if they were to press backspace and
then -- you can kind of see here that backspace is right next to the HOME key.
If they were trying to press backspace and missed, it skips everything! It just
quits! Everything gets reset. Putting the HOME key as like the 'reset everything'
key I think was a bit of a mistake. You know, why not use the reset key back here
because far as I can tell that does nothing. Maybe it resets like this or
something, it's possible.
Oh yeah and look at this, it actually
does have a glowing red light on the back. Just kind of an ominous device
don't you think? Can't just be me right?
[Clicking the button for no reason] So something else
that I wanted to test out on here is its DOS capabilities. And being that it is
the computer that it is, it has MS-DOS version 2.11 Built into the
ROM here, which is quite handy. So yeah if you don't want to use the disk that it
comes with, you know, you don't want to boot up from this then you can just boot
straight into this version of DOS.
Or you can use another like, official IBM PC DOS
disk like this. I'm gonna put that in. This is DOS 3.3. And hooray it's an
upgrade.
So we've got that drive right there, which is just the disk that's
inserted, but we can no longer access the ROM drive. And there is, like I said
earlier, no internal hard disk or anything like that,
so you will still need to use other disks if you want to do anything else on
here. So either put them on like a bootable disk or boot from DOS and then
install something else to another disk. Hehe, so we're gonna try that here
with SimCity.
Installing from Drive A: yes. To drive A: which just means we'll have
to install it to a blank floppy disk. So we are going to be installing it to CGA
mode because that is actually what this computer is running. It's kind of odd if
you think about it like, this is called the Personal COLOR Computer but it's
only a monochrome display.
Although it does have CGA color graphics in there.
But then again we're installing the black-and-white version of CGA. It's a
complete identity crisis with this computer what we're doing here. And there
we go, we have SimCity in CGA running on the Avon Beauty Vision, which is really
just to Toshiba T1000 with a different case. So I got the copy protection sheet
here.
And that mouse cursor is really hard to see. The little hand right there? Look at that, you move it and you can't see a thing. Oh yeah I love seeing those
monochrome graphics draw in CGA on a computer this slow. And there's the
copy-protection let's see, what is this.
Okay so it should be four seven three
three nine three. "Congratulations you passed!" Well thank you for letting me play the game that I bought decades ago. Alright so it's SimCity with a mouse
cursor I still can't see [chuckles] Oh, there it is, look at that. This display, it's
all weird and stretched but you know that's just kind of how it is.
So let's
see here. [Disaster sound plays] Ooh. Guess that's a tornado. Well whatever man.
All right well that's this thing.
It plays SimCity. Seal of approval! Well that's about it for the Avon Beauty Vision Computer for this video. And I gotta say
I am endlessly amused by these kinds of things. Especially this part of it of
course, since that's the most unique aspect.
And I would be curious if it
could be repurposed to do anything else on a computer. Or I mean, you know you could just repurpose it to make it some kind of a sci-fi prop for cosplay or
something. But anyway yeah. If you ever used one of these back in the day do let
me know! I would be curious to see what the experience was like or if you were
an Avon representative and know anything more about the particulars of acquiring
one of these.
Like, was it a specialty item that only more experienced folks
got hold of? I assume probably, because it seems like it would be an expensive thing.
But yeah I don't know. Lemme know in the comments and thanks for watching
another LGR oddware episode! And if you liked what you saw here then
fantastic! So stick around if you'd like more of this, there are new videos every
Monday and Friday. And as always thank you very much for watching!.
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