A friend sent me a link to WishbookWeb.com. It is a fun project. You can look at Christmas catalogs from 1933 to 1988.
I enjoyed looking at the toys in the 1933 and 1943 catalogs. It is interesting to see how much you could get for a dollar 70 years ago.
Years ago I heard a story about Sears Catalogs. The claim was an American company had set up a large manufactoring plant in South America. Tens of millions of dollers were invested. They trained the local people and got the factory going. After a couple months the workers started quiting. They were making more in a couple months than they had made in years. After a couple months they had enough money saved to last a long time. Finally one of the executives had the idea of passing out Sears Catalogs to the wives of the workers. Soon every man was back at work, and worked year round.
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Technorati tags: Christmas, catalogs
2 comments:
Great find! I wrote a paper on these catalogs in a college sociology class once, looking at how the gender roles portrayed in the toy section became less rigid over the years (based on which children were shown playing with the typically "masculine" or "feminine" toys). I remember being distracted by the catalog content itself, spending too much time reviewing the prices and trends. Funny to see the changes in what we value or think is cool!
It is amazing how our wants become needs when we have even a little extra money. It is also interesting that the Sears catalog could make people think they are so unhappy with their current life that they are willing to give up massive amount of freetime to get "things". Smart on the part of the executives though.
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