Growing up, portable cassette players were always called “freestyles” here. I never knew it was a marketing thing, or that some other countries also objected to the naming.
this is “original research”, which means i dicked around on the internet archive for half an hour. it may be wrong.
I was confused about it being called a “Stowaway” in the UK, as they were always called “Walkman” as far as I was aware - though apparently it was indeed called the “Stowaway” from mid-1979 for at least a few months, possibly even a year or two. It was called the “Walkman” from “the early 1980s”.
yeah there is very little info on this stuff. i chose a map from 81 but at that point it was already a walkman in england. however i did find a picture of the “sony stowaway” original packaging.