Advertise here with Carbon Ads

This site is made possible by member support. 💞

Big thanks to Arcustech for hosting the site and offering amazing tech support.

When you buy through links on kottke.org, I may earn an affiliate commission. Thanks for supporting the site!

kottke.org. home of fine hypertext products since 1998.

Beloved by 86.47% of the web.

🍔  💀  📸  😭  🕳️  🤠  🎬  🥔

An incredible deep dive into the golden age of gadget catalogs. Love the bloggy voice…somehow I had never heard of any of these. These names though: “Our Space-age Product Catalog” & “Products That Think”. 😍

Comments  2

Sort by: thread — thread . latest . faves

T
Timothy C Truxell

I was an avid consumer of the DAK catalogs. I even bought the BSR speakers and equalizer featured in the winter 1986 edition. The speakers lasted until 2010 and the equalizer lasted until last year (I found a replacement for the equalizer--same model and everything, and it's still going strong (using it as I type this to listen to music). Thanks for sharing this.

M
Matt G

We received an Amazon toy catalog in the mail recently. My three year old absolutely loves it. Apart from my feelings about Amazon, I love that he's into it. My wife asked if I was into those as a kid. I remember the JC Penney's holiday catalogs, but those were more my sisters' style. And then I remembered Computer Shopper. Those 2 inch thick beasts. Ten year old me would pour over them for hours, picking out all the compatible pieces for the computer I would someday be able to buy. If I were a few years older, the DAK catalogs would've been my jam.

This thread is closed for new comments & replies. Thanks to everyone for participating!