Commodore at the June, 1981 Summer CES in Chicago, IL
This is a collection of black and white photos taken of Commodore’s booth at the June, 1981 Summer CES in Chicago, IL.
These photos were among a large collection of documents and photos procured from the collection of former Commodore staffer, Michael Tomczyk in April, 2024. I’ve been slowly scanning and archiving materials since then. These photos were scanned July 26, 2025.
The 1981 Summer Consumer Electronics Show was held from May 31 – June 3, 1981 at the McCormick Inn, in Chicago, Illinois. Commodore’s booth was set up at Lobby 1807.
One year prior, at the 1980 summer CES, Commodore had two early prototype designs of what would become the VIC-20 on display: the Commodore East Coast MicroPET, designed by Bob Yannes, and the Commodore West Coast (Moorpark R&D lab) G-Job, designed by Bill Seiler, Chuck Peddle, and John Feagans.
The MicroPET design was chosen to become the basis for the production design, which was created by a team of Commodore’s West Coast engineers: Bob Russell, Bill Seiler, Chuck Peddle, and John Feagans.
The new computer was publicly unveiled as the Commodore VIC-1001 at an event at Seibu Department Store in Tokyo, Japan in September, 1980.
Renamed to VIC-20 for the United States market, the computer was officially unveiled in the US at the Winter CES show in Las Vegas, in January, 1981.
The VIC-20 began shipping to dealers in the United States after March 30, 1981, so while people in the United States saw the VIC-20 initially unveiled six months earlier, it was extremely fresh on the market when Commodore showed it at the 1981 Summer CES.
Also featured at the 1981 Summer CES were products from Commodore’s Consumer Products Division, including the Programmable Electronic Thermostat, and many wristwatches.
A few interesting things you may notice in the pictures below:
- In the photo that depicts how expandable the VIC-20 is by showing it with several peripherals including a disk drive, the disk drive shown is a PET IEEE-488 drive, which required a special cartridge to work with the VIC-20. The VIC-1540 disk drive designed specifically for use with the VIC-20 wasn’t available until April, 1982.
- The VIC-20 Space Invaders clone was marketed as “Avengers”, but the demonstration shown playing in these photos says, “VIC Invaders”.
- The VIC-20 Rally-X clone was marketed as “Radar Ratrace”, but the demonstration shown playing in these photos says, “VIC Road Rally”.
