Snuggies, Gender-Specific Easy Bake Ovens And Synthetic Fabric: A Look At The 1975 Montgomery Ward Christmas Catalog
By Chuck Sudo in Arts & Entertainment on Dec 21, 2012 8:40PM
With online retailers like Amazon, Zappos and Overstock.com, shopping is way easier than it was, say, 37 years ago. Adjust for inflation and it may have been cheaper. There are times we miss reading a shopping catalog, though.
Which brings us to this: Chicago Shopping scanned nearly three dozen pages from the 1975 Montgomery Ward Christmas catalog, which contained the latest in loungewear (which would become popular 35 years later as “snuggies”), toys, the earliest video game technology, gender-specific Easy Bake ovens, television consoles that weighed a ton and the most flammable fashions the 70s had to offer. It rare to find a pair of pants that can be both a fire hazard and a floatation device if you tie the cuffs in a knot.
View the entire catalog at Chicago Shopping. The blog Off My Bird Chest also has some scanned pages from the catalog. (How did we miss the “Archie at Riverdale High” collection?)