Resurrecting The Past: 1980 Sears Holiday Wish Book

This edition of "Resurrecting the Past" was originally going to be "Resurrecting the Past: Christmas 1980", as the photo above sort of illustrates. I was going to go over the contents of the 1980 Sears Wish Book and also survey what was on TV during the week of Christmas, using the TV Guide from that time. Once I started thinking about what was going to be in this post I realized that my original vision was much too ambitious--and the post would be way too long. Not only that, but after seeing how long it was taking to put this whole thing together I'd be working on it until well into the New Year (and the hope was for this to be published before Christmas). So, for brevity's sake I'll just concentrate on the 1980 Sears Wish Book. Perhaps the TV Guide part of the story will eventually make it onto the TV Guide Time Machine sometime in the future. Without further delay, let's get started...

When I was a kid growing up in the 1970s and 1980s a sure sign that the holiday season was getting under way was when the Sears Holiday Wish Book would arrive at the house. We didn't get it every year, and I don't remember if they came in the mail or if my parents picked them up at Sears. But I do remember the excitement of opening up one of these thick and hefty tomes. Nowadays you can get most of your shopping and sale information online. You can even actually do most of your shopping online for that matter. The need for a gigantic catalog from Sears every few months has greatly decreased over the years. That's good news for trees, but I feel that it takes one little bit of what was special about the holidays away. Yes, it was a very small part of the overall picture, but it was something I really enjoyed just the same.

My family wasn't rich. My parents worked hard to support our large household. We never went without, but we were also never overwhelmed with piles of unnecessary "stuff". Mom and Dad always managed to get plenty of gifts for everyone under the tree on Christmas--and maybe we had a little better appreciation for that stuff than someone who always got every minor whim fulfilled. I say all this to explain that I would pore over the Sears catalog (or at least the toy section) every late-November/early-December, and circle a ridiculous number of things that I "wished" for. I knew that I wasn't actually going to get all that stuff, but it was just fun to fantasize a bit. This is what made the Sears Wish Book such an important part of the season for me. I did end up with a few items from the catalog. Whether they came from Santa, Sears or some other department store I can't say for sure, but I'll mention some of these items when we see them. And now it's time to take a look at the contents of the Sears Wish Book for the Holiday Season of 1980. I'm not going to illustrate every page, after all it has a total of 668 pages (including covers). Instead we'll just look at a few of the many highlights (or at least things that I consider highlights). These highlights won't be grouped by categories. Instead they will go by page number--just like we're looking through a catalog from front to back. And here we go:

1980 Sears Wish Book front cover

Here's the cover of the 1980 Wish Book. It was certainly a wonderful thing to see as a kid. I don't remember this one specifically, but can imagine seeing the cover and being totally put into a Christmas frame of mind. It doesn't hurt that there are a couple of kids checking out their new presents under the tree with their parents looking on in the background. In 1980 I would have been eleven years old at Christmas, so my taste in toys had changed a bit over the last few years. Nonetheless I was still very much interested in all things toys.

Page 13

I wasn't interested in sports much on 1980, but if I had been I'm sure I would have asked Santa for one of these NFL football jerseys. Most likely it would have been the Number 14 jersey worn by quarterback Steve Grogan of the New England Patriots.

Page 20

Or perhaps one of these NFL jersey and helmet sets would have been a more tempting gift to request!

Page 46

Now like mentioned earlier, I mainly concentrated on the toys in these catalogs when perusing them as a kid. But in the interest of giving a better idea of what kind of stuff Sears was selling in 1980 we'll look at a bunch of other things as well. Here are some nifty pajama sets. If I was to check these out I probably would have had a tough time deciding if I wanted one of the Star Wars ones, the Buck Rogers one or the Star Trek one.

Page 66

I definitely wouldn't have been checking out the latest fashions while leafing through the pages of the Wish Book, but here's a hint of what the well-dressed kid might have been wearing that year (not to mention a look at what pretty much every kid hoped and prayed wouldn't be under the tree).

Page 70

I don't really remember this, but apparently there was quite the western/cowboy fad going on at the end of 1980. This might have had something to do with the popularity of movies like "Urban Cowboy" (1980) and songs like Glen Campbell's "Rhinestone Cowboy". Maybe it was even related to the continuing interest in CB radios and trucker culture that I mentioned in the TV Guide Time Machine blog "Smokey and the Bandit (March 23, 1980)". Whatever the case I suppose I would have been slightly less horrified by wearing these duds than the suits above.

Page 74

Here's a few more fashions of the day (check out the pockets on those "Perma-Prest" jeans!). The only reason for this page being here is the Empire Strikes Back t-shirts, which I definitely would have liked at the time. Heck they even make "retro" shirts like these today.

Page 182

A selection of clocks that could be of interest to kids. I seem to recall the Big Bird one in the upper left hand corner, but didn't have it myself. A friend or relative must have owned one of them. On the other hand I did own a Star Wars wristwatch, which I'm almost positive was the blue C-3PO and R2-D2 one on the left. Like most of the items I'll mention that I owned I have no idea whether I actually got that watch for Christmas in 1980, or if it was given to me at a different time, but since it's in this Wish Book I figured it was worth mentioning.

Page 221

Does anyone else remember these horrid-looking boots that we always called "Moon Boots" when I was growing up? I don't remember if I ever actually had any of these ugly things myself, but I do know that I always thought they were ugly--even in 1980 when I was 11 and a fan of science-fiction movies. You'd think that something called "Moon Boots" would have appealed to me, but no.

Page 340

The Wish Book also had a section on Christmas trees and all sorts of holiday decorations. Here's a look at a few of the trees they were offering in 1980.

Page 352

Could you really have called Christmas Christmas back then without a fruitcake? I never partook of them, but they always seemed to be around. It was a tradition that I never quite "got". Oh well, to each his own.

"The MASTERPIECE"

Page 362

While I didn't have a taste for fruitcakes, I did enjoy those meat, cheese and cracker boxed gift sets and felt they were an integral part of the holidays. I'm not sure if we had them all the time, but it seems like it in my memory. They would probably have been received at Christmas, and I remember enjoying them around New Year's Eve. Maybe this is a sort of made-up memory that has always caused me to have a soft spot in my heart for these things that I'm sure some people find as horrid as I found fruitcakes back then.

Page 407

We didn't get our first microwave until about two years after this catalog came out, but they were already one of the hot (no pun intended) new technologies of the early 1980s. I put this one up because it looks very similar to the one we would get a couple years later. In fact, here is that very microwave for comparison:

Page 421

For anyone who thinks that camcorders have always been tiny things that fit in the palm of your hand, check out this "portable" Video Cassette Player with Video Sound Camera! While the camera itself isn't terribly large, keep in mind that you also had to lug the VCR around with you when you went outside to film your home movies. There'd probably be a whole lot less mindless stuff on YouTube if we still had to record video on these behemoths. Of course at the time they were a miracle of technology and miniaturization. Not only that, but they even used the smaller (and soon to be obsolete) Beta video tapes instead of VHS ones. On the page before this one Sears also offered a selection of pre-recorded movies that you could buy and watch in your own home whenever you wanted! Yeah, that doesn't seem like anything special today, but at the time it was revolutionary. Most people still didn't have cable and it had only been recently that you could actually buy movies (if you could afford the astronomical cost of a VCR. I should also mention that Sears only offered twenty-one titles at this time. Here are a few of them. Note the prices:

"Silver Streak" ($54.95), "M.A.S.H." ($54.95), "The Poseidon Adventure" ($54.95), "The Sound of Music" ($74.95), "The Muppet Movie" ($54.95), "Night of the Living Dead" ($54.95), "Grease" ($59.95), "Barbarella" ($59.95), "The Making of Star Wars" ($54.95)* and "The Ten Commandments" ($79.95).

*Keep in mind that you would be paying $54.95 for a tape of "The Making of Star Wars", not the actual movie "Star Wars" itself.

Page 436

A few months after this Christmas I bought my first ever tape recorder. In fact I got it on St. Patrick's Day 1981. I don't think I was into them in December 1981, but soon after I got the fever to tape stuff bad. For the next few years I'd prop my little portable tape recorder (similar to the ones above) up next to the speaker of the TV or radio and tape music or the audio of movies and TV shows. That probably seems like a strange thing to do, but VCRs were still very expensive at the time and we didn't get our first one until 1985. It's amazing how entertaining I found the process of taping and then listening to stuff from the TV. I've managed to find most of those old tapes in the past couple of years and have really been to travel back in time a bit by listening to them once again.

Page 440

I was just starting to get into music at the end of 1980. By 1984 I was very much into it and wanted to get a guitar so I could become the next Jimmy Page or Eddie Van Halen (an ambition that never came to pass). While I wasn't really into them at the time I remember stopping on the musical instrument pages to look at the guitars that Sears offered. Maybe they lit a little spark inside me without me even realizing it. Who knows?

Page 444

Disco was close to being dead at the end of 1980. Punk, synth-pop and new wave were really taking off, but you'd never know it by looking at the selection of groovy disco lights and strobe lights that Sears was selling in this Wish Book.

Page 447

Roller skates were big at this time (and I suppose roller disco probably was too, to some extent). Here's a few of the skates that Sears was selling about a decade or so before the introduction of in-line skates.

Page 460

It's seems strange now to think that Sears sold real, honest-to-goodness firearms right along with the roller skates and guitars seen above in 1980. I don't think they do any more (though I can't say that for sure). The times have sure changed. I probably checked out the pages with rifles and shotguns back then, but I wouldn't have circled any of them. It didn't really seem like something that Santa would be likely to leave under the tree.

Page 479

It seems like soccer (or football a it's known throughout most of the world) has been trying forever to become really popular in the United States. I remember playing soccer as a kid and enjoying it, but it just never seemed to be able to catch on. There are just too many long-entrenched sports to choose from already (football, baseball, basketball and hockey) for soccer to really be able to take a bite out of them. Of course soccer is still around, and millions of kids (I might be exaggerating) are in youth soccer leagues today--not to mention that as a result we now have the well-known term "soccer moms". There are even professional leagues for both men and women that try to draw spectators away from the other sports. I forgot that there were also pro soccer leagues back in the 1970s and 80s. Here are a selection of uniforms and apparel from the long defunct North American Soccer League (NASL). Wonder how these were selling around Christmas 1980?

Page 515

There was a time before iPods and MP3s when people would actually listen to stuff on records, cassette tapes and 8-track tapes. Along with a selection of classic children's books this page features a multi-media entertainment option that I remember loving as a kid: book and record sets. You'd put on the record and actually hear music, sound effects and even the story itself while you followed along in the book. Talk about interactive entertainment!

Now, we're finally going to start checking out some toys! Like I mentioned earlier, I would have gone straight to this section when I opened up a Sears Wish Book as a kid, but for the sake of giving a bit of a more complete picture of Christmas 1980 we've taken a bit longer to get here than I might have back then.

Page 532

No, I wouldn't have been asking Santa for Barbies as a kid. But I just had to add this page here. Check out the size of this Barbie Dream House! That little girl could have practically lived in the house herself! I was also struck by the Sport & Shave Ken doll featured here. I know that times, fashions and styles change (we've already seen that in earlier pages), and I know that Barbie and her friends change right along with them--but check out Ken! Check out his funky 'fro! Check out his groovy (and shave-able) beard! And check out his shorts!

Page 554

Finally, we're starting to see some of the "Star Wars" and "The Empire Strikes Back" merchandise that was selling so big around this time. "The Empire Strikes Back" had been released in May, so The stores must have been absolutely flooded with all things "Star Wars". In the photo at the top of this blog can be seen my very own "The Empire Strikes Back" comforter/sleeping bag that I may very well have received on Christmas morning in 1980 (though I'm not positive). This page features models rather than true toys, but check out the detail. Right along a sailing ship, a visible engine and a Pontiac Firebird we have the Millennium Falcon, Darth Vader's Tie Fighter and an X-Wing Fighter.

Page 560

Here's some more visual and audio entertainment for kids in the days of yore before the internet, iPods, iPads and downloadable movies and music. I remember having a Talking View-Master. It was similar to the book and record sets above in that it took an existing visual medium and added audio to it. It seemed like an amazing thing to me back then. The Winnie-the-Pooh Show 'N Tell Phono Viewer, the Movie Viewer Theater and the Talk-to-Me Player and books provided similar multimedia experiences. And I used to have one of those little Walt Disney Movie Viewers seen on this page. It was so cool to turn the crank and watch a cartoon through the viewer that actually looked like an 8mm home movie camera.

Page 561

The next page featured the details of some of the products listed above, as well as a bunch of View-Master reels that were available. The only actual toy on the page was the 2-XL Talking Robot.

It kind of surprises me that 2-XL was given only a small corner on a black and white page, but there there he was. Maybe it had already been available for a couple years and wasn't "new" enough to warrant more attention? I never owned a 2-XL myself, but remember playing with one at a summer program I used to attend. It seemed like such a cool thing to have a robot talking and interacting with you. There are similar educational toys out these days (my daughter got an Alphie robot for Christmas last year). The thing that I find so interesting about 2-XL now is that he was a futuristic-looking robot whose information was supplied by...8-Track Tapes! Nice.

Page 563

Sears sold a number of instruments (both real ones and toy versions) in this catalog. We've seen a couple of the electric guitars they had earlier. I put up these rather toy-like drum sets because I had one very similar to these. In fact it might very well have been the "Denim Country" one featured on this page. I like the pitch Sears used for these sets: "Drum up some interest in music while boosting child's dexterity." While those may be valid points, they fail to mention all the noise the kids will be making at all hours of the day and night if you got them one of these!

Page 566

This page features some pretty cool communication-based toys. Walkie-talkies were always a cool thing for kids to have while running around outside. I remember wanting one of those spiffy-looking space helmets featured here. The best thing on this page though is the Sound FX Machine.

Now, this was something I REALLY wanted and I'm sure I circled it in our Wish Book. I did indeed get one of these and had a ball with it. Once again, I'm not sure that I got it for Christmas, but it's certainly likely. I was able to find my old Sound FX Machine recently (as well as its somewhat worn box (seen in the photo at the top of the blog). Unfortunately it doesn't work very well anymore. It powers up and makes noise, but you can't really adjust the sound much. I'm hoping it's something I can fix someday. Here is my very own Sound FX Machine (minus the battery cover, which I believe I do have lying around somewhere):

And, for a little then and now, check out the ad from 1980 and the recreation from 2011:

Page 568

Here's some arts and crafts stuff. This page features the classic Lite-Brite, but the main reason I'm putting it up is because I had the Crayola Craft Art Workshop Kit at the upper right of the page. It's yet another of the things that I may or may not have opened up on Christmas morning in 1980, but at least it's in the Wish Book.

Page 570

Here's another classic: the Speak & Spell. Another one of those electronic educational toys that tried to make learning fun. I remember having fun trying to figure out ways to make the Speak & Spell say inappropriate things. There was also a comic in the mid-80s who had an act where he had a conversation with a Speak & Spell. I had the Little Professor math teacher on the bottom left of the page. It seems pretty similar to the Professor Mathics one next to it.

Page 585

It was a bit of a surprise to not find any Big Wheel cycles in this catalog. This page has some cycles that obviously "borrow" pretty heavily from the classic Big Wheel look. Maybe another department store had exclusive rights to official Big Wheels or something. I have no idea. All I know is that the Star Patrol Cycle above is rather nifty looking. And those Hot Cycles on the right are pretty much clones of the Big Wheel. Check out the CHiPs one that even had a siren!

Page 606

Page 607

Just a few classic Fisher-Price toys, including the familiar Play Family School House and Play Family Farm. Note the little telephone on the bottom of page 606 that they still sell today as a retro toy--even though kids don't know what a rotary dial is anymore.

Page 624

Page 625

I think most kids who were into toy cars were probably either Matchbox kids or Hot Wheels kids. While you could certainly own both, it seems like the one you preferred most probably said something about you. What that was I don't know. I myself was a Matchbox kid. Here's two pages with a bunch of stuff from both companies (as well as some from others like Fast Wheels and Roadmates). I collected Matchbox cars for a few years spanning the late 1970s and early 1980s. While I don't know if I got any of these for Christmas in 1980, here are some of the ones I still have from what was shown on page 624 of the Wish Book:

14 of the vehicles in the "24-piece Collector's Set"

A less-impressive display of 3 vehicles from the "8-piece Country Set"

Page 630

And now we finally see the Star Wars toys! After seeing characters on shirts and pajamas along with a few models here are the classic Kenner toys that most kids who grew up during this time remember so well. I had many of the action figures here (IG-88 was always a favorite of mine for some reason). I also had (and still have) the Darth Vader Collector Case seen here.

Page 631

While I never got the Millennium Falcon toy pictured here, a friend bought me the newer (and much larger) one put out by The Legacy Collection for my 40th birthday a couple years back.

Thirty years later...Better late than never!

Page 632

Here's a few more neat toys. The one I really wanted from this page was the Chutes Away parachute game in the middle. This is the one where you look through the little scope and drop parachutes from the plane into the cups on the turntable below.

I still remember the old commercials for these things and how cool it all seemed to pilot that plane and drop chutes to their target at night. I have a feeling that if I had actually gotten one the novelty would have worn off pretty quickly. Since I never did the memory of what I imagined it to be like lives on.

Page 634

There were a lot of slot car sets for sale in the 1980 Wish Book, many of them with glow-in-the-dark elements. Here's just one of them.

Page 641

How's this for a sign of the times (or two)? In the remote control section we find a page featuring a customized Thunder Van and another Pontiac Firebird (looking very Smokey and the Bandit-ish). How 1980 can you get?

Page 655

And here's the Sears Video Arcade System (better known to most as the Atari 2600)! This was the first major step ahead from Video Pong, and despite how crude and basic it seems compared to today's video games, it was an exciting time when these babies came out. I never had one, but played with them at friends' houses quite a bit. Though I never really felt a burning desire to own an Atari 2600 I do remember a couple years later when the next generation of home video games was introduced I quickly jumped on the bandwagon. The Atari 5200 and Colecovision both seemed light years ahead of the 2600. After doing as much research as I could I decided that Colecovision was the one for me. I lobbied very hard for one and was rewarded with my favorite Christmas present of all time in 1982--a Colecovision for my family! But 1982 was in the future when this Wish Book came out, so that's a story for another time.

Page 656

Here are some of the video games available for the Sears Video Arcade--not to mention a good look at the stunning graphics that were featured in them.

Page 659

Here are some electronic games. While of a similar size to the Game Boys of the following decade and similar units that followed, these ones only featured one game apiece (or a variety of very similar games). Cartridges were available for the Atari 2600, but technology hadn't quite gotten to the point of allowing game platforms like that in a handheld format. Of the four games featured on this page I owned two (Stop Thief and Quiz Wiz) and remember playing with the Merlin Electronic Wizard--though I don't think I ever had one of my own.

Page 660

And here's a few more neat-o handheld electronic games. I never owned any of these, but remember thinking that Hit and Missile looked really cool. I did have an Electronic Concentration handheld game that I probably got around this time (or at least within a year or two). It was pretty similar to the units seen on these last couple of pages. I got mine at a childrens' Christmas party that the Tupperware company put on every year (my Dad worked for Tupperware at the time). Like the Sound FX Machine, I was able to find my old Electronic Concentration game recently. It is also in the photo at the top of this post. Here's a closer look at it:

Back cover

That's about it for the 1980 Sears Wish Book. While the back cover isn't exactly exciting (unless you happen to be into major household appliances of course), it is an appropriate way to close out this little trip back in time by symbolically closing the catalog. Hope you enjoyed it. Depending on your age it might have brought up old memories, or simply made you laugh at what passed for toys a few decades in the past. Despite how long this post has been we've only touched on a little bit of what is found in the 668 pages of the catalog. If you have any interest in checking out more of these, the website Wishbook Web has a bunch of Christmas catalogs from different years and different companies from the 1930s through the 1980s that have been scanned and can be looked through page by page. It was a nostalgic trip down memory lane when I first heard about that site. Also, someone called Wishbook has posted scans of many Sears and other companies' Christmas catalogs on flickr. They even have the 1980 one from Sears, just in case you just didn't get enough of it here. Even though they're available online now online I really wanted to get my very own physical copy of a Sears Wish Book that I could go through for a bit of holiday nostalgia. A search of listings on eBay showed that Christmas catalogs from this period were selling for a pretty steep price. You never know what people are going to want, huh? Eventually I was able to find my 1980 edition very cheap. While it was something I really wanted I don't think I would have payed very much for it--especially since there are ways of checking many of them out online. Who'd have thunk that would be possible back in 1980?