As a young Midwestern nerd in the 90s, getting one of those cow boxes delivered to our home was better than Christmas. (Christmas happens every year!). Somehow I can still remember the new computer smell…

Hilariously good. Imo they worked on me. I can quote Gateway 4DX622 at $1899 OTOH of my head now. And it got me to read the whole thing.

> And you won’t get to brag that you own a computer from Iowa.

South Dakota. Gateway was HQ’d in North Sioux City, SD.

There is also a South Sioux City, NE, though to my knowledge no computer manufacturers have had a presence there.

My dad worked at Gateway in the mid-late ‘90s and early ‘00s. Employee perks were pretty decent for the time; for example, he could borrow a laptop to play with and learn on at home — we used this almost entirely to play games, since we had a hand-me-down 486 at the time. They would also give you a PC in agreement for continued employment for N years. We got a Pentium III 550 MHz screamer of a system, which was absolutely bonkers for my young self.

These ads feel like a mental cleanse compared to ads now, which are focus grouped (and now AI polished) until there is nothing left but soulless gray goo, devoid of any personality whatsoever. Nice to see color again on the You Got It, Baby ad.

Related: https://www.printmag.com/design-trends/flat-logos-with-alex-...

I had at least one Gateway 2000 desktop and several laptops over time. All but the last laptop were lovely machines. The last looked good on paper, but it was thicker and heavier than it should have been, and start losing keycaps fairly quickly.

I love that these ads had (cornball) personality.