Have you ever watched Virtual Boy footage or seen photos of the VB booths from conventions like E3 1996 and such?

Ever notice those Virtual Boy floor model displays that have signs on top of the lighted VB sign displaying the title of the game being played (see first picture)?

Well…

The “in-store” display kiosks were no exception, they too had signs on top of them. Only these signs didn’t display the title of the game being played. Instead, they displayed the suggested retail price of the Virtual Boy. But sadly, when the price of the Virtual Boy started coming down so did these signs, and is most likely the reason why nobody (as far as I know) has ever seen one.

All of this information is coming from my own personal experience playing a VB floor model display at my local Toys ‘R’ Us around the Virtual Boy launch time. I remember backing away from the display and looking right at that sign and thinking it was the price of the kiosk. I even remember the shape and color of the sign, it was kinda round with jagged edges and was a bright neon color (either neon green or yellow).

My store display happens to still have some of the adhesive residue on top of it as seen in the second picture. A sure sign that this sign was once on top of my store display.

Does your store display have this residue on top of it?

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   e3-vb-displays.png
   

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   display-sign-residue-scaled.jpg
   

That’s an interesting discovery. Hopefully other store display owners can shed more light on this.

Are you sure that your display is from a store? Maybe it was actually used at E3… maybe it’s one of these from the video. 😉

KR155E wrote:
That’s an interesting discovery. Hopefully other store display owners can shed more light on this.

Even without the residue you’ll notice two slots on top of the sign. I believe these were used for inserting the sign and the adhesive was used to secure it. I know these slots are not used as some sort of vent for the light bulb because the back of the sign has enough of those.

Are you sure that your display is from a store? Maybe it was actually used at E3… maybe it’s one of these from the video. 😉

100%, my store display is a counter display and I dont think those were used in tradeshows.

KR155E wrote:
Hopefully other store display owners can shed more light on this.

Vuefinder says “let there be light” 😉

Looks like the retail store that once owned my counter display had stuck a Virtual Boy counter card / mobile to the top of the marquee. The adhesive strips from a counter card / mobile stand lines up perfectly with the adhesive remains on the top of my marquee. You can even see a blue-ish blemish near the strips where some bastard probably rocked the sign back and forth, breaking the mobile to get it off.

I do not want this find to take away credit of my above claim that store displays onced had signs that displayed the suggested retail price of the Virtual Boy. Hopefully, one day, a VB store display with said sign will turn up, because I remember it pretty clearly.

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   counter-card-mobile-stand-on-vb-display-scaled.jpg
   

Best bet to confirm would probably be to check recorded news stories from the launch.

Knightcrawler wrote:
Best bet to confirm would probably be to check recorded news stories from the launch.

Huh! That’s actually something I tried doing before I created this thread, but I couldn’t find anything. Closest I found were the videos of the VB booths from E3 96′, wich is where I found the first image in this thread with the Dragon Hopper signs on top of the kiosks.