bvac6
Well-known member
Picked these two up today from a thrift store!
Fantom jackpot!
- Thread starter bvac6
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Abysmal
Had one of those "Fury" Ones once.. It was awful.. Literally fell to bits... And all it's weird Myriad of cleanouts kept getting blocked up with junk and making it stop working..
I never knew there were other models.. But no wonder they went Bust..
-Cap10323
Had one of those "Fury" Ones once.. It was awful.. Literally fell to bits... And all it's weird Myriad of cleanouts kept getting blocked up with junk and making it stop working..
I never knew there were other models.. But no wonder they went Bust..
-Cap10323
man114
Well-known member
The Fury & others
The copper color Fury was the Wal-Mart color. I was working in housewares there part time during college around the time those were out. Markup was actually pretty good, so Fantom was not paying a lot to make them even back then, but it was still a premium over most of the $60-100 stuff they normally carried. They sold fast, you couldn't keep them in stock, Fantom couldn't make them fast enough. I remember ordering 20-30 at a time to try and build a backstock to meet demand, you couldn't get them to last a week on the shelf. The return rate was surprisingly low for defective out of the box compared to most other brands. Most of the north American sourced stuff of the time was, Hoover was still building in the USA even into low end machines, they were also low on the return scale.
Given the number of those things they sold I'm surprised more don't turn up, I think I garbage picked one of that color and it was merely clogged, I took it apart and cleaned it, had I known that color would be that hard to find down the road I'd have sold a standard green one instead.
They were priced pretty consistently across Wal-Mart, Target, Kmart and Ames at the time, but all the others were the standard color. Ames was slightly more expensive but they were always on sale, their base price was $229 vs. $199 elsewhere but they'd run it on sale for $179 on occasion which was about as low as they went. Service Merchandise I believe carried the standard color, as did local catalog retailer Brand Names (which I believe was one of the few to have Special Edition models right before Fantom and Brand Names closed around 2001). I don't remember if Lechmere had anything buy the Thunder and Lightning.
Given the cost, they were quite expensive for the likes of Wal-Mart and Kmart who were selling mostly $70 soft bag uprights, they sold really well.
Thunders were a different story, the same basic model existed with minor cosmetic variations for years, I seem to recall the Destiny version going back as early as the very early 1990s or even late 80s around here (but we were close to the point of import). We got the 11 amp version when they were still selling them in plain brown boxes at Lechmere (and it still works!). They were a much more durable machine, very rarely do I pick one of these up that has any more serious issue than being clogged, needing a belt, or having string wrapped around the ends of the brushroller.
The Lightning canister portion was very durable, it was the power head that was the source of issue. I find canisters all the time with either broken or missing power heads but the canister still works perfectly.
An interesting side note Fantom didn't run the cord on the outside tubes of the wand to the powerhead so everything snapped together, but apparently they never patented the idea. If you do a patent search, Rexair patented that type of design for the newest Rainbow and from what I read it is otherwise identical to what Fantom did back with the Lightning in terms of wording (and it pretty much works the same if you've seen the new Rainbow).
The copper color Fury was the Wal-Mart color. I was working in housewares there part time during college around the time those were out. Markup was actually pretty good, so Fantom was not paying a lot to make them even back then, but it was still a premium over most of the $60-100 stuff they normally carried. They sold fast, you couldn't keep them in stock, Fantom couldn't make them fast enough. I remember ordering 20-30 at a time to try and build a backstock to meet demand, you couldn't get them to last a week on the shelf. The return rate was surprisingly low for defective out of the box compared to most other brands. Most of the north American sourced stuff of the time was, Hoover was still building in the USA even into low end machines, they were also low on the return scale.
Given the number of those things they sold I'm surprised more don't turn up, I think I garbage picked one of that color and it was merely clogged, I took it apart and cleaned it, had I known that color would be that hard to find down the road I'd have sold a standard green one instead.
They were priced pretty consistently across Wal-Mart, Target, Kmart and Ames at the time, but all the others were the standard color. Ames was slightly more expensive but they were always on sale, their base price was $229 vs. $199 elsewhere but they'd run it on sale for $179 on occasion which was about as low as they went. Service Merchandise I believe carried the standard color, as did local catalog retailer Brand Names (which I believe was one of the few to have Special Edition models right before Fantom and Brand Names closed around 2001). I don't remember if Lechmere had anything buy the Thunder and Lightning.
Given the cost, they were quite expensive for the likes of Wal-Mart and Kmart who were selling mostly $70 soft bag uprights, they sold really well.
Thunders were a different story, the same basic model existed with minor cosmetic variations for years, I seem to recall the Destiny version going back as early as the very early 1990s or even late 80s around here (but we were close to the point of import). We got the 11 amp version when they were still selling them in plain brown boxes at Lechmere (and it still works!). They were a much more durable machine, very rarely do I pick one of these up that has any more serious issue than being clogged, needing a belt, or having string wrapped around the ends of the brushroller.
The Lightning canister portion was very durable, it was the power head that was the source of issue. I find canisters all the time with either broken or missing power heads but the canister still works perfectly.
An interesting side note Fantom didn't run the cord on the outside tubes of the wand to the powerhead so everything snapped together, but apparently they never patented the idea. If you do a patent search, Rexair patented that type of design for the newest Rainbow and from what I read it is otherwise identical to what Fantom did back with the Lightning in terms of wording (and it pretty much works the same if you've seen the new Rainbow).
