Throughout its existence, Nelsonic produced pop-culture-themed wrist-watches for children and young adults. The chronograph digital watches, typically made of molded plastic, invariably featured an alarm and utilized
LCD screens to display the time for their wearers. In time the company began manufacturing multi-purpose units that used the LCD screen to combine time display functions with simple video game functions. These simple video games were variations on the theme of the
calculator watch, and the patent covering the Game Watch line is in fact classified as an "electronic calculator watch structure". The company's first game watch was called Space Attacker. Becoming the first electronics manufacturer in the United States to produce game-watches, Nelsonic earned a large share in this specialized market and was able to earn the attention of large video game companies at events such as the
Consumer Electronics Show.
Nintendo,
Midway Games, and Mylstar Electronics. With roots in the toy market, Nelsonic was also able to obtain similar licenses to produce LCD versions of popular electronic toys like
Milton Bradley's
Simon as well as to produce original LCD games for non-game toy franchises like
Barbie,
G.I. Joe, and
Power Rangers and even for film and TV franchises such as
Ghostbusters. So well-known became the Nelsonic brand that it was even able to license its own original games (such as the Nelsonic version of the public-domain
blackjack which was licensed to
Caesars Palace). As time progressed, Nelsonic experimented with higher-end products such as metal watches and increasingly complex game-watch designs. In 1990 the watch-making giant, M.Z. Berger, made a large bid and was able to successfully purchase the company. For a period of nearly a decade after this acquisition, M.Z. Berger continued to use Nelsonic as a subsidiary branch and to employ the Nelsonic mark in the release of game-watches and the production of new re-releases of popular models from the 1980s and early 1990s. By the end of the 1990s, however, public interest had waned (quite possibly due to the rise in popularity of more advanced
handheld video game consoles and, eventually, of other portable computing devices, such as
PDAs and
smartphones) and this practice came to an end as M.Z. Berger shifted markets to target higher end consumers more exclusively. Today the Nelsonic mark is still in use for traditional watches and is not used in connection with game-watches. It is still a subsidiary of M.Z. Berger and as recently as 2007 it was listed by the
AAFES as garnering over $1.9 million in sales. ==Game watches==