Christmas Memories: 1976 Sears Wish Book

One of my fondest memories from Christmas past are looking through the catalogs produced by all the major department stores of the day like Sears, JC Penney and Montgomery Ward. These mammoth editions of the stores seasonal catalogs usually came out sometime in the fall and unlike other editions featured all the latest toys that would be available for purchase that Christmas. Though the book featured tons of merchandise like clothes, kitchenware and electronics the toys were the most important part and upon receiving the book the kids of my generation would jump past all that stuff and go straight to the back.

   As a rule the arrangement of the toy listings in the Wish Book was very structured. Baby toys were first, then games, followed by dolls and other toys for girls. Being a boy, I would rush right past the Barbie stuff in pursuit of stuff I was into,

 Eventually you would hit paydirt and you eager little eyes would be filled up by page after page of Hot Wheel cars and cool stuff for a big time sci fi geek like myself. I would have definitely spent a great amount of time focused on the page above dreaming of playing with those Mego Star Trek playsets and that Space 1999 Eagle.

Once I had sufficiently filled my mind full of out of this world toys I would move on to my other passion electric train sets. Tyco used to produce such great stuff back in the 70s and every year my parents would buy me one. I still have a lot of the items from these train sets boxed up until I can find a cabinet to display them in proudly.

Alas, Christmas catalogs are thing of the past going out of style in the early 1990s. Though Sears continued publishing catalogs until 2017 the last true catalog of this type came out in 1993. It's sad that the kids of today will never experience the pure thrill of sitting down with a Christmas catalog.