LCD screens in cars are pretty much ubiquitous at this point, to the point now that we’re all maybe getting a little sick of them, or at least sick of every control being slapped on them. Cupholders are pretty ubiquitous as well, and have been around and common a good bit longer than screens. That means there was a period – from, say, the early 1990s to the mid-to-late-2000s – when a car with cupholders and no screen was quite common. And yet for some, there was an unfulfilled urge for a screen of some type, which is why I think this remarkable and strange product exists: a TV shaped like a beer can, designed to fit in a car’s cupholder.
Yes, that’s right. There was a time in the 1990s, a time before streaming services or genuinely convenient ways to record television (VCRs always sort of sucked for this, and digital video recorders weren’t widely available until 1999) where if you really, really didn’t want to miss any episodes of The X-Files then you had to either live your life based on some schedule decided by some network douchebag or you had to be extra clever and use something like the Casio Can-Tele.
I had never heard of these before, and information about them, which seem to have been for the Japanese market only, is quite sparse. I found out about them from this Instagram post (it’s one I can’t embed, but definitely worth looking at). You can find some for sale here and there online, or, more accurately, ones that were for sale, and its from these posts that I gleaned what little information I could find.
The Can-Tele was also known as the TV-350, which seems to be because these sorts of beer or soda cans are normally 350 ml in size. ¥20,000 back in 1994, when this thing seems to be from, comes to about $150 today, which really doesn’t seem that bad for something like this. I mean, if you’re able to find a cheaper or better TV the size and shape of a soda can, you should buy it.
The thing takes 6V, so there’s a step-down transformer for you 12V cigarette lighter outlet, and I guess if you had an old 6V car you could skip that and power it directly. There was also an option to use four AA batteries for a true wireless experience.
They clearly intend this for car use, as you can see the flyer there shows it in a car’s ’90s-style spindly cupholder:
There appears to have been at least three variants of the Can-Tele, each with slightly different can designs:
One is directly based on a Suntory Malt’s beer can – I guess they had some sort of licensing deal with Suntory? The middle one there looks a bit more like a soda can, maybe? And the one on the right feels more like a paint can to me, but I suppose it could be beer or soda, too.
I think these things are fascinating. Modern cars are now starting to be able to play streaming video content, and I even have some cars that, weirdly, will play DVDs in their dash-mounted infotainment screens. So it makes sense that this ability would have been desired before. In-dash TVs have been around for a long time before, but those are more expensive and complex solutions; a TV specifically designed for a cupholder is just a really clever solution.
I miss analog TV. There was something oddly magical about being able to pull moving images and sound right out of the air with a metal stick, no complex setup required, no servers or IP addresses or codecs or anything like that. I once gave a talk about it all, on the last day of analog TV broadcast in America, if you want to watch it.
Anyway, I just thought you might enjoy learning about this incredible footnote in the history of in-car entertainment. Now I just need to find one for sale!
There’s a 4th can, but it’s a different later design – a Suntory ‘Boss Coffee’ one. It’s a bluescale (not greyscale) screen for VHF/UHF, but does have an AV-in plug so you can run a video feed into it.
https://www.facebook.com/jdmpartsrupewrecht/posts/965393925621435
The Sony TV in the first photo is exactly what I bought as my first TV in 1977 when I was ten-year-old boy. I bought it from a neighbour for $50, which was enormous amount of money for a boy who earned pittance from the newspaper delivery.