Wish Book Scans

Aside from the turkey dinners, afternoon marathons of Godzilla movies, and digging for new toys in the upstairs bedroom drawers, another of the highlights of every Thanksgiving weekend we spent at my Grandma Cooke's in Pennsylvania was digging out that year's Sears Wish Book from the tiny magazine cabinet next to her recliner and then spending literally hours drooling over the new toys. Since my parents would often head out shopping on Black Friday, I'd spend most of Thanksgiving evening creating truly sick-dog huge Christmas lists from all of the provided ideas in these catalogs. Yeah, my chances of getting even half of this stuff on my lists was nonexistent, but hey, I had to try.

Anyway, somewhere out there in 'Netland, some very driven individual (bless his heart) has taken the time and effort to scan and post all 670 pages of Sears' Wish Book For The 1979 Holiday Season on flickr.com, and gazing upon those ancient pages was a powerful, wonderful time warp straight back to my wantonly avaricious child self. Remarkable nostalgia.

For those of you who don't have the time or don't feel like scanning about for an hour, I included links to some of my favorite parts:

* Some fave reading materials of mine from that time period on this page, including Dynamite! and Bananas magazines, and the Charlie Brown Book(s) Of Question And Answers.

* My dad had this electric ball bearing clock halfway down this page. This was cute and cool for about a day or so. After that, it became intolerable since it made so much damn noise. We slept in the room right behind where this thing was set up. At 1:00 A.M. nearly every morning, I was awakened by this thing doing a power dump as the maximum amount of usable marbles (12:59) were all summarily jettisoned from their shelves and rolled into the guts of the damn thing.

* Wee Wonderful Waterfuls!!! Slime!!! Silly Putty!!!

* Oh wow ... they had Bee Gees-themed kiddie turntables and amplifiers?

* Oooo, Spirograph. And Lite-Brite. And that spinning thingie that you dripped paint onto to make wicked cool designs (and made one unholy fun mess if you timed it right). They don't make 'em like this anymore.

* I don't think we had the Winnie The Pooh model, but that bath tub toy in the upper left corner on this page looks awfully damn familiar ...

* Ye gods ... I think half of my old childhood toy box is on this page and that page alone.

* When I was much younger, my brother and I were all about Hot Wheels. We both wanted that beauty service garage, but never got one.

* Ack. The less said about this page, the better.

* Mmm, I lusted after this Iwo Jima playset for years.

* Star Wars toys! Now we're talking! I'd forgotten that this awful, ultralame early Mos Eisley cantina playset even existed (the die-cast metal Star Destroyer was pretty cool, however), but there was much joy in our household when my brother and I scored the Millennium Falcon, the X-wing fighter and the Darth Vader TIE fighter instead.

* Ooo, Nite-Glow.

* Haa, I'd completely forgotten that Sears had their own Atari 2600 clone.

* This was long before I ever owned a computer, but the pages here and here that advertise the Atari 400 Personal Computer System (complete with data tape drive and awful membrane keyboard) are a hoot.

* I never got the 2-XL as seen here, but my sister got the Speak & Spell, and I believe my brother had the Little Professor calculator.

* Oooo, how desperately I wanted a Big Trak or a (ROM The Space Knight, for that matter)? Let me count the ways...

* Merlin!!!! I never had a Quiz Wiz, but oh did I badger my parents for one...

* I had these electronic sports games ... well, (1) (3) and (5) at least!


Ahh, memories. I've said it before, I'll say it again: I love the internet.