In '69 I had a reel to reel that included an 8-track recorder. We thought it was the highest of technology to be able to put our reels onto something we could play in our cars.
Yes, Googling I see there were recorders. I know I never had one, nor did any of my friends and I can only guess we’d moved on to cassette by the time they were more available.
Skip, aw that kills me. I’d have sent them to you in a heartbeat. Aerosmith to Zepplin, it was all the rock that became classic. I’d kept them forever because of the memories but just thought considering newer technologies there wouldn’t be anyone that wanted them anymore. I’m going to look when I get home though and see if there’s more and, if so, they’re yours for the taking.
Seems they always (the plastic) came in four colors… black, pink, white and blue.
Pre-recorded cassettes were available in the early 70’s; I had Creedence Gold on cassette while I was still in high school (I graduated in 1974). I had a Craig stereo cassette player in my first car (a 1968 Ford Galaxy) in 1975. A friend had a Pioneer Super-tuner stereo w/cassette player in his van in 1976 or 1977- I was so jealous!
Here is the stereo my friend had in his van. I wanted one so bad!
My parents bought a 79 Chrysler Newport, brand-new, with an 8-track stereo. My brother found a cassette adapter for it in 89 or so, and I drove that car and used that adapter until I graduated high school in 93 and bought my first car.
Everyone I ever gave a ride to in that car got a serious laugh out of that 8-track. Most of them were getting cd players installed in theirs, if they could afford it. 
I had a schoolmate who had a portable 8-track, which was shaped kind of like an egg, sort of like those funky TVs from the early 70s. It was almost like an early style boombox. He listened to The Wall on it, so it had to be 1980.
In fact, I have an 8-track in my home right now. But it’s a recorder, not a player. And it uses a hard drive, not tape.
I later got the cassette adapter for my Craig 8 Track too. One end was shaped like a tape and plugged right in, then morphed down to hold the cassette. Heh, nice call.
I saw some blank recordable 8-track cartridges at a garage sale a couple years ago. Tempted to buy and see if they would go for anything on eBay, glad I didn’t. But… then I saw an 8-track recorder at a thrift store. Could’ve made a copy of something recent and freaked people out.
Note that the quality of 8-tracks wasn’t that bad. (Esp. considering the alternatives, like AM radio.) But the short lifespan of tapes plus quick degradation of most players left many people thinking they had poor audio quality. Cassettes really didn’t take off until the Dolby/metal tape stuff became cheap enough to hit the mass market.
Pretty good deal if you didn’t mind the track change and the re-ordering of songs to minimize interruptions.
(But riding 400 miles across mountains and deserts with just one cart is not advised. Even if it is a “Greatest Rock Hits” compilation. Ah, “Rock Me”.)
I remember using a cassette adapter to use a portable CD player in a car. So in theory, you could have chained your adapters to have a CD=>cassette=>8-track conversion series in that car!
Dear god, the sound would probably be so degraded by then it would be like playing the music through a mattress. 
Plus I didn’t switch over to cds until '95.
I got my first cassette player circa 1970-1, and cassette tapes were plenty big then. There were a lot of pretrecorded cassettes of all types available. The Walkman thing just gave it added life.
The only person I knew with an 8-track player was my father, who got his in the 1970s.
What used to drive me crazy about 8-tracks was that the track would always switch right in the middle of your favorite song. I was extremely happy they went the way of the dinosaur. A good idea but poorly executed.
In 1990, I put out a very serious and not at all silly or pretentious sound collage type thing. It was available on CD or 8-track.
(Had 200 CDs made, and the 8-tracks were made at home as needed. Six, if you’re wondering.)
While going through my grandfather’s junk I came across an 8-Track Barbra Streisand album unopened in it’s original plastic wrap. I wonder if it is valuable, any takers?
I bought mine mostly because I really liked the cabinet; it was about the height of a standard desk maybe like four feet long, and the color matched the decor I already had. It included an AM/FM radio* as well as the 8 track player. It lasted quite a while and I got a lot of compliments on the cabinet.
*The radio may have had short wave capability but I can’t swear that it did.
I have one like that sitting down in my basement as I type! Has a record player, too. Came from my EX’s uncle, heavy as all get-out and it’s right in a spot where it has become in the way and we’re trying to figure out just what to do with it. I hate to part with it in one sense, but it’s just a piece of outdated furniture at this point.
And 8-tracks were quite cool at one point. I had one in my first car - a "69 Cutlass Supreme convertible and we had the Grateful Dead and Boston blasting up and down the Vineyard (Martha’s Vineyard off Cape Cod) one summer that I’ll never forget. With the old cassettes, the sound was horrible and you had to turn them over manually to listen to the other side or you had to rewind and fast forward to try to find a particular song. It was a pain in the ass. With 8 tracks, you just hit the number of the track you wanted to hear. No turning over, no searching back and forth, and much better sound.
What!? Thirty-six posts and not one “Get off my lawn!”?
[sunrazor hitches his britches to his armpits]
Gol’durn whippersnappers! Eight-track was romance, it was the way of the future, it was James Bond and we were purty sure it came from NASA technology, that’s why!
Ye gods, salem – '69 Cutlass with an 8-track – you were a god! No wonder I couldn’t get laid back then!
I had an 8-track recorder back in 1972. I bought packs of blank AMPEX tapes at the base exchange at Moffett Field. I recorded practically every LP in my collection and made mix tapes before anyone called them that.
I had several 8-track players in my ‘68 Bug during my early college years (several because 2 were stolen). I had them hooked up to 2X12" speakers mounted back behind the rear seat area. We used to cruise around and listen to compilations of “Made in Japan”, “Live at Leeds” and "Rockin’ The Fillmore".
The most fun we had was at a party where we hooked up some microphones to the 8-track recorder and taped the party in progress. Then we played that tape on another 8-track and recorded ourselves listening to it. Then, we played the tape of ourselves listening to the original tape and recorded that. After that, I can’t remember what happened.
For christmas one year I got a stereo system that had a record player, AM/FM radio and 8 track player/recorder in one unit. It had left and right channel inputs for recording to 8 track. I think they bought it at sears. I still have it.
For way more than you needed to know about 8-tracks, check out 8-Track Heaven. It turns out 8-tracks were released by record clubs as late as 1988 and still are made as novelty items by indie acts today!
As far as the OP, the popularity of record formats is always about convenience. Why have high quality sound formats like DVD audio and SACD gone nowhere, while the thin sound of mp3 and iTunes dominates? The same reason cassettes beat out LP’s in the '80s and 8-tracks were far more popular than reel to reel tape–it’s a lot easier for the average consumer to operate. The average consumer cares very little about high quality sound.