when did they leave this ball game?

[eurekaprince]

White-Westinghouse

The story behind the appearance of White-Westinghouse vacs in the late 1980's is quite interesting:

In 1975, White Consolidated Industries - a large maker of major appliances (no relation to Electrolux USA's parent Consolidated Foods) bought Westinghouse's major appliance division. White Consolidated Industries (WCI) then created a brand name of major appliances called "White-Westinghouse." Then in 1986, Sweden's Electrolux gobbled up White Consolidated Industries and added White-Westinghouse to the list of brand names they owned for use in the North American market.

For the full history of WCI, click the link at the bottom of my post.

For some reason, Electrolux decided it was best to place their Eureka vacuum division under the new WCI umbrella. For about 15 years after that, Eureka vacuum cleaners were actually being produced by a company called White Consolidated Industries....probably right up until Electrolux bought back the rights to use their name in North America in 2007. If any of you have old stock Eureka dust bags from the 1990's, look at the copyright at the bottom of the package: it should say WCI, or White Consolidated Industries. I think all the World Vac boxes were labelled with that corporate copyright as well.

The result of this corporate takeover was the sudden appearance of a line of Eureka vacs branded with the name White-Westinghouse. I distinctly remember seeing cool cream- coloured Eureka Bravo uprights labelled White-Westinghouse in a department store in Florida. I think the line also included a WW Mighty Mite as well. This was also the period in Eureka's history that saw the strange appearance of a line of Eureka vacs branded the "Christian Klingour" line or some such Swedish name. They looked similar to the WW vac line, but had a unique "fashion designer" look to them and sported cool cream and hunter green colour combinations. I probably have the designer's name wrong....but it should be close to Christian Klingour....

The later appearance of the old Westinghouse logo on vacs such as the Unplugged Cordless vac has nothing to do with WCI. This is a case of misleading logo identity. Sorry to sound like a grumpy old man, but these days when I see appliances labelled with an old brand logo like GE or Sunbeam or Lewyt or Westinghouse, I know it has nothing to do with the corporate giants of the 1960's. Some small company has most likely bought the rights to use the name and graphic logo to fool the consumer into thinking they are getting the real thing when they are not. Can't stand it when my mom sees a Sunbeam product advertised and exclaims: "oh....Sunbeam is a good name!"

Once we are on the subject...can someone ask Panasonic to revive Sanyo's Transformax Stick Vac?

http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/white-consolidated-industries-inc-history/

 

[fan-of-fans]

I mostly saw the White-Westinghouse vacuums and other household appliances and electronics at Kmart. However, I bought a White-Westinghouse revolving brush hand vac at Bud's Outlet (a Walmart outlet store at the time) back in the late 90s. I don't know who made it, it was white with a black cloth bag. There was a rubber cap at the front that gave access to the belt/motor pulley. I should have kept it, probably would have made a good vacuum to clean car mats/carpets. But I never used it so sold it in a yard sale, though it wasn't a bad vacuum.

Those GE labeled Eureka vacuums were sold by Walmart as they had an exclusive right to use the GE name on small appliances until recently. They would relablel items from different manufacturers so they could market a full line of housewares.

 

[super-sweeper]

Thanks for the cool info, Eurekaprice!