1976 Hoover 12” Desk Fan | Kipas Angin Meja Jadul

Finally, another chrome grill fan! When you hear the name Hoover, you probably think of the American brand known for vacuum cleaners, and sometimes even fans. But this Hoover is a totally different story. Same name, different company. The logo design and overall branding are completely unrelated. From what I can tell, this one seems to come from either a local Indonesian brand, or maybe OEM roots from China or Taiwan.

This is the Hoover 12” Desk Fan, model D-302, dated around 1976 (based on markings on the power cable). That timeline makes sense, especially because the fan only runs on 110V, which was more common in that era. Judging from the overall design, I’m pretty confident this unit shares the same body and grill template as a Toshiba fan. The exact origin is a bit of a mystery since there are no stickers left, and there’s basically zero information about this Hoover logo online. But what I can say: the build quality and performance are top notch.

I actually found this fan on a marketplace in pretty rough condition. The oscillation gear was missing, the motor barely worked, and it looked like it had seen better days. After servicing by replacing the capacitor and adding an old Cosmos gear, the fan came back to life and now works like a charm. Wo my surprise, the fan is still relatively white and the chrome shines beautifully for something nearly 50 years old. Even the fan’s base still has its original protective plastic cover intact. Overall, it’s mint except for some fine cracks on the neck caused by age. Maybe it was only unboxed much later in the 90s, or it was stored in good conditions.

Performance-wise, this fan is pure 70s character, a breezy, almost sleepy airflow. On low speed, it spins very gracefully at super low RPM. It should have been silent, but probably due to age, the motor now hums with a bit of a diesel-like sound. My favorite setting is medium speed, where the 4 blades plus the humming motor create this nostalgic, unique vibe. The gap between speeds is also pretty wide: low is really slow, medium is already quite strong, and high speed feels very powerful yet still stable.

Another quirky thing: just like some older Maspion fans I’ve seen, the speed order is reversed, speed 1 is high, 2 is medium, and 3 is low. So you can absolutely use it for daily cooling, but of course the limitation is it’s a 110V unit, meaning you’ll need a step-down transformer (stavolt) to run it on 220V.

Overall, this Hoover is one of my favorite vintage finds, rare, mysterious in branding, yet solid in build and character. A cool piece of fan history to add to the collection.