The Channel Register is reporting this week that the Dutch firm that owns the Commodore brand has been declared bankrupt.
One has to wonder if the German and Dutch firms that traded Commodore around over the past few years failed to understand the value in leveraging the American nostalgia for the brand.

What is sad is that I truly think that Commodore could have come back had the brand been managed smartly. Unfortunately, in this day and age I’m not sure how many people have the intestinal fortitude to base an ad campaign on nostalgia, since it’s hard to demonstrate how that could be sustainable moving forward. You’d pretty much have to put all your eggs in that basket and hope that you could gain enough traction in the market to transition into a more forward-looking approach once you gained some new brand awareness. The problem is, without this approach the Commodore brand becomes a dead weight around their neck (seen as old and outdated) instead of an asset (good feelings about my very first computers, retro, hip).

It is kind of sad, but their most valuable asset now that they are near folding is probably their IP in terms of licensing t-shirts and other swag to companies that cater to nostalgic 80’s kids.