Yeah, this was '83. They went into the store and saw both on the shelf, and the C64 was "too much" so I got what I got. I think a year later the price on the C64 just made the VIC20 totally pointless.

Also they bought it, brought it home, and then two days later took us all on a 3 week vacation road trip across Canada. I sat in the back of our Toyota Tercel with a pile of magazines with BASIC listings in the back of them fantasizing about getting home to try them out. Torture.