Protect your Records with the Record Vacuum By Ronco

My family had a pretty decent sized record collection, sadly we didn’t take great care of them. I personally was probably responsible for the death of dozens of our albums through my poor treatment of them. Across the street from me was a family that could not be more different from mine. They took their music collection very seriously and their albums were handled gently and regularly cleaned.

It was there that I first saw the Record Vacuum by Ronco. It was not in use by them, because according to my friend’s father, it treated the records too harshly. They had received the vacuum as a gift and since they didn’t know how to return it, they gave it to my friend, who used it as a toy of sorts. He would wrap old damaged records in white paper and try to draw Hypno-wheels and other interesting designs so that he could watch them spin. I found it amusing the first time I saw it, but after one attempt at my own, I was done with it.

Perhaps I was lacking in imagination, but I just didn’t find it all that entertaining. Besides if you make hypno-wheel, you shouldn’t have the bottom of it blocked and obstruct the hypno-pattern. How is THAT going to hypnotize the super spy you captured in order to get them to reveal their secret plans?

Here are two classic commercial for the Record Vacuum where you can see it in action.

Did anyone have one? What did you think? Was it useful? Too rough on the records?