Come see the stupider side of Sears

It Came from the Sears Catalog is a fun site grabbing up pages from the 1971 catalog. I suspect these honking, heavy catalogs have died out of most American homes, but when I was growing up, we always had several years worth piled up somewhere.

The Christmas catalogs, a.k.a. the Wish Books, were the ones we really loved, but we paged through the non-toy versions anyway. And we were growing up in the 1970s and 1980s, in the suburbs of a major American city, not out on the prairie somewhere where we could only dream of polyester leisure suits and Revereware. I mean, we didn't have the Internet, but we had malls, and yet...there was something about the catalog that just hypnotized a kid.

Some favorites:

"Where on earth does one take a little boy dressed in one of those outfits? Were there bars and discothèques for little boys and girls?"

"Jerry, the forgotten member of the Partridge Family. He was thrown out over creative differences with Danny."

"Why is daddy riding me around the neighborhood, while I wear this ridiculous bunny outfit?"

"This guy has everything; the candles, good suit, soft music, good food, nice dinnerware but he fumbles with the green card table."

"Someone at Sears suggested 5 tone shag but that was too much and that person was fired."

"The Taliban window treatment. Cover most of the window except for a small square."

"One of the children of the damned makes her bed."