This article contains Amazon affiliate links — as an Amazon Associate, RetroArcade earns from qualifying purchases.
Videosmarts arrived on the home console market in 1986, an unusual entry that broke sharply with the cartridge-and-ROM conventions of its era. At a time when the Nintendo Entertainment System was redefining the home gaming industry in North America, Connor Electronics pursued an entirely different audience: young children learning letters, numbers, and other foundational concepts. The platform stands as one of the most distinctive pieces of educational gaming hardware ever sold in the United States, recognizable not for its graphic horsepower but for the standard VHS tapes it relied upon for software.
Where conventional consoles stored games on cartridges, Videosmarts partnered with a household appliance — the family VCR — to deliver its content. Players watched segments featuring puppet characters and then answered prompts by pressing color-coded buttons on a simple controller. The result was a hybrid of television viewing and interactive learning that anticipated, in some respects, the multimedia-driven edutainment wave that would flourish on later systems. For collectors and historians cataloguing the breadth of the medium on the consoles hub, Videosmarts represents an intriguing footnote in the broader story of late-1980s home gaming.
Quick Facts
| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Maker | Connor Electronics/VTech |
| Type | Home |
| Released | 1986 |
| Launch Price | $47.50 |
| Media | VHS tapes |
History
Videosmarts was introduced by Connor Electronics in 1986 as an educational home console aimed at young children. The system marked a notable first in the gaming industry: it was the first gaming platform to use standard VHS tapes as its storage medium. Rather than competing with cartridge-based systems like the Nintendo Entertainment System or Sega Master System, Connor Electronics targeted a different audience — preschool and early elementary-aged children — with content designed to teach foundational academic skills in the comfort of the family living room.
The hardware itself was intentionally simple, in keeping with the platform’s focus on very young users. Videosmarts connected to a VCR’s audio output, allowing the VCR to play special VHS tapes that contained the system’s educational content. Children interacted with the system through a controller equipped with four color-coded buttons, which corresponded to on-screen prompts during the video segments. Educational puppet characters, including Teachin’ Teddy, Roger Parrot, and Penelope Goldfish, guided young learners through lessons, and the system was designed to respond to children’s button presses as they followed along with the video presentation.
Following its release, Connor Electronics eventually merged with VTech, a company already well known for its electronic learning toys. After acquiring the rights to the Videosmarts platform, VTech distributed additional VHS titles starting in 1990, expanding the system’s library and extending its commercial life into the early 1990s. The console’s unusual format and limited audience kept it from achieving mainstream gaming recognition, but it carved out a distinct niche within the broader landscape of educational technology and home entertainment, and it remains one of the more curious entries on the consoles hub for the 1986 release window.
The Game Library
The Videosmarts library consisted of VHS tapes containing educational content designed for young learners. Each title leveraged the system’s interactive format, combining video segments with prompts that required children to respond using the color-coded controller buttons. The puppet characters — most notably Teachin’ Teddy — served as hosts and instructors throughout the various programs, creating a consistent and approachable learning environment that bridged passive viewing with active participation.
Among the titles released for the system, several focused on core academic skills:
- Teachin’ Teddy: Numbers 1-2-3 and Comparisons — an introduction to basic counting and the concepts of greater than, less than, and equal to.
- Letters A-Z — coverage of the English alphabet with pronunciation and recognition exercises.
- Numbers 1-20 — extended practice with counting and numeral identification up to twenty.
- Colors and Shapes — a foundational lesson in identifying common colors and geometric shapes.
- Letter Sounds — phonetic instruction paired with the alphabet, helping children connect letters to their spoken sounds.
- Vocabulary — word-building and language enrichment exercises.
- Nutrition — a lesson in healthy eating and basic food groups, reflecting the era’s growing emphasis on childhood health education.
- Just Say No — a title addressing substance avoidance and personal safety, reflecting late-1980s public health messaging aimed at young children.
The VHS-based format allowed each title to incorporate longer, more video-centric segments than a typical cartridge could hold, giving the educational content a television-like quality that suited the system’s young audience. After VTech acquired rights to the platform in 1990, additional titles were distributed, expanding the library during the system’s later commercial years and ensuring that the platform continued to receive new educational content even as cartridge-based consoles dominated the broader market.
Legacy
Videosmarts occupies a unique place in the history of home gaming as a pioneer of VHS-based gaming on consoles. While later systems experimented with laserdisc formats and full-motion video, Videosmarts was among the earliest consumer platforms to repurpose an existing home video format for interactive content. Its approach — leveraging standard VHS tapes for educational software — predated the multimedia CD-ROM era and demonstrated an early model of how video content and interactive prompts could be combined for learning at home.
The console is also remembered for its innovative use of puppet-based instruction. Characters like Teachin’ Teddy, Roger Parrot, and Penelope Goldfish provided a friendly, approachable interface for young learners, and the system included a distinctive “turn me off” announcement feature that has remained a memorable quirk for those who used the platform as children. This combination of playful design and academic content helped establish a template that later educational systems would refine, and it remains one of the more idiosyncratic design philosophies documented on the consoles hub.
In the decades since its release, Videosmarts has become a highly sought-after item on the secondary market. Its limited production run, unusual format, and association with late-1980s childhood education have made it a rare collectible. For researchers and enthusiasts cataloguing the full breadth of gaming history, Videosmarts serves as a reminder that the medium’s evolution included experimental approaches that existed well outside the mainstream cartridge-based industry, and that the line between gaming, education, and home video was sometimes deliberately blurred.
Collecting It Today
Collectors interested in Videosmarts should be prepared for a challenging hunt. The system’s limited production run and the fragility of VHS media mean that complete-in-box examples are uncommon, and functional hardware with original tapes can be difficult to source. Prospective buyers typically search through specialty auction listings, retro gaming collector communities, and estate sales, where surviving examples occasionally surface after many years in storage.
When evaluating a Videosmarts system, collectors should consider the condition of both the console and any accompanying VHS tapes. VHS tapes from the 1980s are susceptible to magnetic degradation, mold, and physical damage to the tape mechanism, so inspecting any tapes carefully — or confirming that they have been stored properly — is advisable. The controller, with its color-coded buttons, should also be checked for responsiveness, as replacement parts for such an obscure system are not widely manufactured.
Original packaging, manuals, and documentation significantly increase a system’s historical appeal, but these materials are even rarer than the hardware itself. Because the platform was distributed under both the Connor Electronics and VTech names, collectors may encounter variations in branding and packaging depending on when and where a particular unit was sold, with later VTech-distributed releases sometimes featuring updated artwork or revised tape labels.
As with any vintage gaming hardware, buyers should research listings carefully and seek out reputable sellers with clear return policies. For those building a broader collection of educational and unusual consoles, the consoles hub offers a useful starting point for understanding how Videosmarts fits within the wider landscape of retro gaming history.