Vintage 1957 Japanese Transistor Radio in Box, Empire DeLuxe

The Empire De Luxe Model 88 seven-transistor radio from around 1957, in the box.
Here's an early Japanese transistor radio in a size I like to call the "overgrown shirt-pocket size." It looks like a shirt pocket radio but there's no way it's going to fit in your shirt. It has a hard time even fitting into its box. And the handle comes tumbling out of the box. This is because handle, and case, cannot both fit on the radio at the same time. The handle won't fit inside the radio's case, the way a Zenith Royal 500's handle does.
So this is how I got the radio, with the handle just loose. Maybe the previous owner was just too dumb to figure out how radio, handle, and case all fit together, but.. so am I.. and so I'm just going to leave the handle off.
It's a nice looking package with radio and earphone, each in their own carrying cases and a strap. It's a fairly simple, plain box structure as we see on many of the earliest transistor radios. In the years that followed, packaging for some but not all of the major brands got simpler and even, you could say, cheaper, while contrary to what you might think, packaging for some of the smaller brands like this one got more ornate, lining the insides of their boxes with satin or felt, and using ribbons and separate compartments for accessories. But this was by no means universally true and eventually, by the 1960s, the cheapest radios had reliably the cheapest packaging as well.. It's... quite the elaborate case.. that folds this way and that to put the radio in and take it out. There are cutouts in the sides of the case for the handle mounts, but I don't see enough clearance for the handle to be able to move.. or even fully seat in the radio with the case on it. The case claims to be "genuine top grain cowhide--hand stitched." And it's thicker than most.
In the 1920s and '30s at the dawn of radio broadcasting, a new market of home radio listening opened up, and a great many small radio companies began operation to satisfy that market. A few of these companies came to dominate that market in time, while many more faded away. Likewise in 1950s Japan, many small companies rose up to satisfy the emerging worldwide market for small radios. And out of this developed what would become some of the giants of consumer electronics. But as in the earlier boom when radio was new, many of the smaller companies in 1950s Japan made just a few models and disappeared from the radio business. This Empire looks like that sort of radio to me. I'm just guessing now, but nothing about it looks like it was made by a company that went on to greater success.
Inside the Empire 88 things look somewhat primitive as you might expect of something made when the printed circuit was still a new thing. There's a tiny schematic diagram inside the back. Everything appears to be all nicely made and all packed in there. The transistors are oval-shaped ones; we didn't see these much past 1957 or so in transistor radios. Imprinted with the outline of the lone star state, these are American-made Texas Instruments transistors. I couldn't get a clear picture of their Texas-shaped logo on these transistors, and if you look online, apparently no one can get a decent picture of this logo on a transistor. Now that seems kind of odd that a company from a state not exactly known for modesty would have its logo, its brand, printed on its transistors in such a faint, namby-pamby manner. Anyway, as to the fact that this is a Japanese radio with American transistors in it-- well, that's something we only saw in the earliest days of the transistor era... Translucent blue plastic covers the tuning capacitor which was made in Japan by Koyo ((Ko-yo)) Electric. Koyo also made the speaker--that's their "K" printed on the back of the magnet. The radio takes four AA penlight batteries and if the chassis layout reminds you generally of the Zenith Royal 500, well, it does me too. Let's put it this way: There's no doubt that one of those Zeniths was lying open in the room when this Empire De Luxe was in its planning stages. Somehow, though, they thought putting the antenna on the bottom was a good idea. Most designers of these radios didn't.
The Empire De Luxe Model 88 seven-transistor radio. Made in an era when many Americans used the words "Made in Japan" as an insult. I haven't been shy about expressing my opinion here about what I believe are this radio's plusses and minuses, but there is nothing here that deserves insult. And bear in mind, that this is not even a major brand radio like a Sony or Toshiba or Panasonic. In retrospect, as Americans our insults aimed at Japan in that day were not just ignorant but they misled us into a complacency that did not serve us well. And so when I hear the insults today being directed at China--or, how is it they like to say it?--"Cheye-na"--When I hear these same insults, I recognize that same ignorance that ultimately hurts.. not China,.. but us.