CONSUMER REPORTS 1990 BUYING GUIDE ISSUE <i> by the Editors of Consumer Report (Grey Castle Press: $29.95) </i>

One of the inadvertent byproducts of the Reagan presidency’s gutting of the federal regulatory system was to make Consumers Union--never a friend of the caveat emptor philosophy espoused by free-market advocates--more powerful. As the federal government grew deliberately more lax in ensuring the safety of goods and services offered consumers, ordinary people needed some organization they could trust to tell them whether what they bought was safe to use, and whether it met its specifications or its users’ needs.

Consumers Union, through its magazine Consumer Reports, has been doing just that--buying products at retail establishments, then testing them and reporting the results--for 54 years. Now CR now has a paid circulation in excess of 4.4 million, making it one of the most important merchandising tools in the United States (even though its tests cannot be used by a company in its advertising or promotion).

A good review in CR means store shelves will be wiped clean of the product in 24 hours. A bad review in CR can hurt sales just as dramatically, as the importers of Sterling automobiles surely can attest.

Every year, CR’s tests from the previous year are gathered in a paperback book, the “Buying Guide,” distributed free to subscribers. Now, for the first time, an oversized, large-type version of the “Buying Guide” is available.

One can argue that CR by its very existence supports the notion that our most important function is to buy something (to be sure, in the case of CR readers, the right something). A more practical problem is that CR’s judgments are not quite gospel when it comes to unquantifiable matters of taste. How do you rate the sounds produced by stereo amplifiers, or the taste of peanut butter? The testers work hard to nail down the elusive qualities of the perfect ice-cream bar, but hey, they make chocolate and vanilla in the first place because people agree to disagree.

But these are quibbles. It’s CR, after all--not rich, powerful TV networks and stations, not most practitioners of daily print journalism--that tells consumers the story advertisers don’t, and regularly publishes lists of recalled, and often dangerous, merchandise, from a shockingly long list of children’s toys to cars.