to be honest mate tasco are a pretty bad name in optics these days. never used to be that way years back though.
i take it the bins your on about are the compact roof prism design without phase coatings? first pair i bought years ago were tasco 12x25 roof prism compacts with ruby coated lenses. i paid about £50 for em... i too thought they were the mutz nutz till a friend let me peer through an old set of 8x30 porro's he had... started my whole interest in binoculars as a collector.
yes they were the russian ones i mentioned earlier.