Here's something really cool...

When I was a kid, my father worked for Sears as a salesman, so we always had the Sears catalogs and Christmas Wishbooks on hand at home. I used to love to thumb through the Wishbook and look at all the cool toys to see what I'd like for Christmas.
Incredibly, there's a website that actually features entire catalogs from not only Sears, but JC Penny, Wards, Spiegel, and others from 1933 all the way through 1988! For an incredible nostalgia trip, I highly recommend looking through the catalogs from the 60's and 70's!

Here is the link:
http://www.wishbookweb.com/

Thanks for that link. I really enjoyed looking at the catalogs during the years I was a kid and remembering all the cool toys my parents bought for us. I still have all my Lionel and Tyco trains stored in boxes along with a ton of lego blocks and matchboxes. Every now and then I get the urge to get rid of them and then just can't.

yeah i remember them too. the sears catalog had a lot of exclusive toys too as i recall.

This is too cool! Thank you very much for posting this Beastball! I remember going through the Sears wishbooks in the fall/early winter and dreaming about all the cool stuff I wanted for Christmas. I'll definitely be going through some of these to see if I can find any familiar pages or products. Sometimes I'd circle the stuff I wanted. I never really got much of what I had asked for (that would have bankrupted the family I'm sure), but the simple act of looking through the catalog and picking out all the best stuff was a fun activity in itself, and kind of became a part of the Christmas tradition.

...Out of the 1969 Sears Christmas catalog



I had just about everything on this page. I was absolutely nuts about Hot Wheels and race cars in general

ADDENDUM:
I just remembered something about my Hot Wheels collection, and how I got many of them. Back around 1970 to 1973, Shell gas stations had a great promotion of a free Hot Wheel car with every fill up. So in addition of getting a new car from my father every time he gassed up, many times I would find a car waiting for me when we visited my grand parents. Awesome times...

That's an awesome memory Beastball!