One of the great pleasures every year in my young life was the Sears Christmas Wish Book. I would pour over EVERY page, picking out what I wanted for myself, what I would buy for my family and what I thought people were going to get from others. I would circle things, or check them off and dream about where I would put all of my stuff. Heck, I would dream about how cool everyone would think I was when I came to school wearing my tiger eye ring and ship’s anchor necklace, smelling of old spice which obviously came in a sophisticated gift set! Online shopping kind of ruined that for me, too much choice, too much scrolling needed and too many places to go. It’s too easy to zero in on just my interests and not be forced to look at ALL the available gifts under $30 or see that Corey Hart sleeping bag that I not only didn’t know I needed but didn’t know existed! When Sears closed it’s doors, the Wishbook went with it and I have to say it’s left a bit of a hole in my life. Online shopping just isn’t as fun as paging through that book and walking around browsing just isn’t my thing. I mean, I do it, I just don’t spend a lot of time in the sections that don’t really interest me, unlike my time with the Wishbook.
Today I saw a post on Facebook that sent me down a bit of an internet rabbit hole. The post was from Mental Floss and it was about the 1990 Wishbook (you can see it here), which was pretty neat. So I wondered if there were other Wishbook pictures available and you bet there are! The internet sure is a wonderful place sometimes! Check out this catalogue of, um, catalogues here. It’s not just the Wishbook either, there’s a lot of other fun stuff to check out too. It hasn’t been updated at all since 2017 but is definitely a fun piece of nostalgia!
