One more time I look back and feel sad for things lost to the age of the internet. I am not complaining about the net (I love the net). I am sad for the lack of a treasure trove of dreams. The Sears Wishbook and the JCPenny’s Christmas Catalog.
Whether you were a Sears Wishbook fan or a JCPenny Christmas Catalog fan, there is one thing for sure, for over a decade there has been nothing like either of these two books.
Today you could look for any toy, and find a web page for it. You can go to a web page for online or brick and mortar stores, like the now dead Toys R Us, and see tons of toys and games. But this can’t compare to the cornucopia, of sure Christmas joy, dreams and toys, games and entertainment that was the “WISHBOOKS”. Hundreds of pages of gift to choose, not the 20 paged Sunday Flyer or even paltry 6 pages that you find in today’s catalogs of Sunday Flyer. Hundreds of Pages containing 1000’s of toys and games. Depending on the catalog you might even find guns (holy crap) talk about dreaming as a kid.
The Viewing of the WISHBOOK
One didn’t just leaf through the catalog. For one if you were in a family of several children, like mine (I was the last of 6), there was a pecking order of who gets to look first, obviously the youngest was last. Next came the when, where and how you were to look through it. Should it be at the dinning room table, or late night in bed, or laying on the floor in front of the TV watching Charlie Brown. Eventually sitting in front of Christmas tree trying to figure out what wrapped present is from my list and hoping that Santa fills in the gap.
The most important thing was how would you record what you wanted. Writing a list with the name of toys leaves to many chances that Mom would get the wrong toy, so should I add the page number and the item number. Why not just mark of the toys in the catalog with Hundreds of pages of gift to choose, marking what you want using paper bookmarks, dog earring or just plain circling.
Not Just a Catalog of Toys, It was a Work of Art
The stores took the catalog serious, for them it was the source of Millions upon Millions of Dollars in sales. To Discourage the catalog being relegated to a magazine stand besides Dad’s armchair, great consideration was taking on the making and choosing of the cover. The catalog cover was to be an image that any mother would be happy displaying on the coffee table and not disrupting the holiday feeling. So images of almost Norman Rockwell-ian caliber were used as the cover.
For me the golden age for the catalogs was late 70’s to mid 80’s. This was the era of Star Wars actions figures and the Game System explosion.
When I received the book the first thing you did was lay it on the front cover so the last pages were no on top. The back of the catalog was where all the toys were, toys were grouped by category each occupying 5 to 10 pages. Imagining all the hours of fun you would have with each toy. I am sure I am not alone having vowed to myself that if I ever was a millionaire I would buy everything in the catalog.
I recently found WishbookWeb.com, a website that is archiving these catalogs year by year, not just Sears and JCPenny but other stores in the U.S. and Canada.
I opened the catalog listing and jumped right to 1977, just before the Star Wars craze hit and just as the home video games were starting (pre Atari 2600 I am talking PONG). I went page by page, year by year. It was like a scene in a Time Travel Movie when the character swoops through a tunnel of images and sounds as the year fly by.
I found myself longing for the toys of year past, now just as I did then. I saw the prices and almost cried at how inflation has taken its toll on our economy, wishing I could go back and stock up on all the toys that then seemed to cost a fortune. The Millenium Falcon was $24 dollars, a set consisting of a Sand Person and 3 Jawas $7.99 (my head is exploding)
As I continued throug I found toys that I was gifted by Santa and my family over 40 years ago. I was a child again, it was the Ghost of Christmas Past.
I want to Thank Jason ( jason@wishbookweb.com) for granting me permission, and please show support by visiting WishbookWeb.com
