So Long and Thanks For All the Catalogs. . .

[Allie Fox]

JCPenney Closing Stores & Ditching Catalogs

For me the JC Penney Christmas catalog was the primary toy shopper in my house. With all due respect to the Sears Wish Book, the JC Penney Catalog was much better.

The biggest thing was the fact that the Wish Book (which has a much cooler name by the way) was mostly pushing its Brand merchandise rather than the "real" thing. Too many "fake" Ataris, "fake" Simons, etc.

JC Penney and Montgomery Ward (the third big Christmas catalog in my house) were always chock full of the "real" toys that I wasn't embarrased for my friends to see (a la TeleGames Pong c. 1976).

R.I.P.

[Adam West]

I remember I would go through both the JCPenney Catalog and Sears catalog and circle items on my wish list...I didn't discriminate.

[MIB41]

I think we'll continue to see this trend with the online marketplace becoming more prevalent than ever before. It's more cost efficient to just advertise online and forego the printing costs of a catalog.

[YoungOnce]

Some printer somewhere just lost a big contract. More people out of work.

[TheDoLittle]

For me the JC Penney Christmas catalog was the primary toy shopper in my house. With all due respect to the Sears Wish Book, the JC Penney Catalog was much better.

Hear, hear.

My grandparents lived in a small town in south Texas. I mean this town was so remote you had to drive an hour just to get somewhere that was marked on a map. If it wasn't for the store catalogs and the yearly county fair traveling department store, I probably would have never gotten christmas presents from them.

We usually visited my grandparents a couple of weeks before school started, about the same time the wish book would come in the mail. The kids would gather around the table and grandma would hand out some markers to us, and we would carefully scan each and every word and picture, circling and writing everything we wanted.

We were allowed one big toy under $20 (and no guarantee it would get purchased), and two small toys that would add up to under $10, and one of those toys had to go to one of the the related kid sitting at the table with us. We were also *REQUIRED* to pick out at least 1 jacket or sweater from the clothing section, and we usually got those before Halloween, whether we needed/wanted it or not. Even during the lean years during the oil bust of the '80s we still did the wish book, even though we wound up going to the new fangled Wal Mart that had just opened up a few towns over.

With the advent of online shopping, I was surprised the catalogs lasted as long as they did.

[HardyGirl]

NOOOOOOOO!

Most of the shopping I do, I do from trhe JCPenney catalogs and call centers! GRRR! And it's funny b/c even though you can shop online, some products were different from catalogs to computers. This sucks!

[wilbs518]

I remember I would go through both the JCPenney Catalog and Sears catalog and circle items on my wish list...I didn't discriminate.

me too!

[SeattleEd]

Yes, thank so you much for the reading material in the bathroom.