In Which I Miss a Lit Bit of My Childhood

Like I said before, I'm not exactly ready for Christmas to be here yet (it's been too warm), but that's not stopping my children from getting ideas. Every time we go to the store, their eyes light up at all the new and shiny things on the shelves.

Then, this came in the mail the other day.

The 2010 Target Toy Catalog. A hard copy of all the things my kids think they could ever want and then some. It's funny to hear them name off all the brands and toy names, which they haven't even really seen because we don't have cable. So all they know is from what movies we watch and stream off Netflix. (They have no idea what a Pillow Pet is. It's great.)

Seeing them pour over 30 small pages of toys makes me remember one big part of my childhood, especially at this time of year. But instead of 30 pages, we had 600-something pages of the Sears Wishbook.

(courtesy of wishbookweb.com)

Yeah, now THAT was something worth fighting your siblings over. And it wasn't just toys in that massive phone book-sized catalog. It was everything from clothes to jewelry to shoes to Christmas decorations. See that rainbow-striped tent in the picture? Yep, I had that. And I loved it til the day it fell apart.

Long before the Internet, before Amazon, before eBay, we got our ideas from The Wishbook.