80C

80C (short for TRS-80 Color Computer) was an informal moniker for the CoCo used by third-party magazines (such as The Rainbow and 80 Micro) and their advertisers in the early years of the CoCo's market life. Although brevity was one motivation given the limited space available in headlines and especially ad copy, and "CoCo" had not yet caught on, the major motivation was fear of running afoul of Tandy's lawyers, since "TRS-80 Color Computer" was a Tandy trademark. It's indicative of how aggressively Tandy sought to monopolize not only the software and accessories market but even the media for its products that publishers would be hesitant to even name the computer in question in a direct and clear fashion. This situation was unique to the CoCo community - no other mass-market home computer system featured dedicated third-party publications and vendors that tiptoed around mentioning the computer they were for. In any case, after a few years, publishers learned that boilerplate statements acknowledging Tandy's trademarks warded off the lawyers, so this concern faded, as did the use of "80C".