Not to minimize Del's impressive collection, but the SKU hunter/historian in me was ecstatic about these finds. In the corner Jamin and crew were setting up some historical pieces. Weren't too many, but they had the box. And boxes mean SKU's and very specific colorways. Luckily for me, I needed the good majority of them. The Berry ATFM (Box date November 1990) and Planet-X RazorBlade were the only two. The rest were new territory.

Splatter Purple and Pink, both with Heater. My SKU's were for Sweep, so I guess I need to hunt down more.
06-509 - June 1993


06-507 - March 1993


RazorBlade Planet-X/Black: 03-720 - December 1990


Blades Desert (Camo)/Grey: 03-221



And here's where I hit paydirt. Military Eyeshade in Blue/Violet - 86-122 . Box date is June 1990

woah. more shots of the military eyeshade please...

I remember you showing me the date codes printed right on the boxes. It is a shame oakley made it harder for you on the newer box =(

Nice find! Definitely looks like there's quite a bit of splatter sku's to get. The sku calls out the frame color lens shape and lens color. Nice to know some for sure at least!

Makes the db messy since it was so clean just having the four frames listed. Perhaps i can add the skus to the heater/sweep listing and leave the splatter entry as a stub.

Great finds! I was there and never saw them.

Dann good stuff! How do you decipher the dates though?

Was something I stumbled upon when the Adrian's M Frame thread was in full swing, and apparently Lee had told me as well. On the back there's numbers like 12-0 or 3-93. The first number is month, and the second is year. Dates from 1991 on will have two digits, 1988-1990 will have the single last digit.

Few more pictures of the front.




The Eyeshade isn't all that impressive. I don't see anything unique about it, aside from the label, and the fact that it was 'Limited'

Man! Those are gems for sure! Dann, do you know what was the box date for that Desert Camo Blade?

Didn't have one. So it either predates the codes, but that would mean either 86-87, or it just simply didn't include one.

Thats good stuff right there!

Nice stuff. It's rare I get to see the Camo Blades, much less NIB. Thanks for the pics. Keep them coming!

I would think that camo Blade had to be towards the latter part of the model's lifetime? In 86-87 had Oakley already introduced known print frames? Whenever I see stuff like that I think early 90's at the earliest.

I would think so. Prints weren't until 1993 on the M's, so i would imagine the same was true for blades.

Some other oddities. Early Half Pint Division?

That's pretty damn cool!

How widespread were the UPC stickers on the early '90s plastic boxes? Some during that era had them when they came to market, while many others didn't.

I feel like some of the real early ones didn't have it, but most from the late 80's onward usually did.

None of the M Frame Strip lens boxes I've seen have UPC stickers, which place it around '90 or '91. Got a couple M Frame Sweep boxes that don't have it either. Was curious what and when they applied these things.

VERY NICE DANN..CONGRATS..

For sure the UPC stickers were around when the Strip lens was released. My orange iridium Eyeshade has it, and it's in a late 80s dated box. Yet I have never seen any 89 Mumbo box have it, only the circle lens sticker.

The question is what is the missing piece of info that we don't have? Did it depend on where the sets were going? For example something like yes for larger retail stores, no for local Mom and Pop stores?

Did it take Oakley a little while to put them on at the start of production, and in the end, because certain models ultimately had a short run like Strip sets, 89 Mumbo, etc, Oakley never bothered?

Or did they pretty much all have them and the retail stores and/or consumers take them off? The lens sticker is cool looking and I could see why a consumer would be OK leaving the lens sticker on, but yet wanting to take off the "unsightly" barcode sticker on the back. It's a very easy sticker to take off, much easier than the lens sticker, I also feel like it was the norm back then to take off barcode stickers if possible when giving as a gift. It was before a lot of collecting crazes of today, back then the idea of buying a pair of Oakley's to never wear and just admire in a case was probably crazy. For stores, things were still very analog during that time, I can image a lot of Mom and Pop shops having a basic register with no scanner (just punch in the sale value with tax). Very possible a lot of stores took them off to add their own dollar label.

Or was Oakley just so dang random at that time? It was the late 80s/early 90s, Oakley wasn't yet anywhere near their peak, the most important thing for them was probably getting the production out by any means necessary to stay alive. I work in a production factory, and sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do to hit production goals.

Who knows? Only JJ or possibly production managers during those times depending on how Oakley was tiered back then.

Yep, I would love to see this mystery solved. I would have figured the labels would be applied to everything if stuff like the Desert Blade or Military Eyeshade have it, but that's not the case. I have seen things like the ubiquitous regular M Frame and Eyeshade boxes that don't have the UPC sticker, so I can't seem to find a pattern in it.

Another thing brought up in the Mumbo thread was how it seems dealers/shops were putting custom sets together. It's not the first time I've heard someone mention something like that, so I think that was for sure happening as well. It's possible Oakley even allowed shops to do the custom building down to the set box. Imagine a shop receiving a box of various lenses, a box of various frames, and a box of various set boxes. Or maybe even getting a stack of generic boxes and various lens sticker sheets so the custom shop themselves could make the entire set from the pieces they ordered.

That would explain something like the Strip sets not having barcode stickers. If the shop put the strip set together, select shops would have the box/sticker for the Strip, but they would be putting it together so they wouldn't have a barcode. I think I remember someone saying that the Strip was mainly available as an accessory when released.

Anyway, I think it's multiple of various scenarios happening leading to boxes not having UPC stickers. The question is which ones are true and which ones are not. I think that would also explain why boxes are more often than not found without UPC sticker because there's so many different ways for the set to be missing the UPC sticker.

I was 100% sure the Strip was accessory only until I found the 1991 price list.