Courtesy of Boing Boing, I’ve just stumbled onto an absolutely amazing time-capsule: somebody with lots of time on their hands has scanned what looks to be the entire 1983 Sears Wishbook for our Friday viewing pleasure.

I used to love the Sears Wishbook when I was a kid, as well as a similar catalog published by a local Utah retailer called LaBelle’s. (I think LaBelle’s was local — I don’t recall ever hearing about it being in other states — but I’m not sure. I may not even be spelling the name correctly. The company carried appliances, electronics, impractical gift items, and fancies for the home; it folded sometime in the late ’80s, as I recall.) Reviewing these doorstop-sized paeans to materialism was practically an autumn ritual at my home; I can remember sitting by the fireplace with my mom around Thanksgiving time, paging through the Wishbook and the LaBelle’s catalog and circling all the must-have Christmas items with a red Magic Marker. Naturally, I was most interested in the toy pages, especially when they featured some new Star Wars figures, but looking at this online archived version today, I find myself gravitating toward the items that no one really thought to hold onto or collect, the everyday goods that remind me of what it was really like to live in 1983. Seen through my usual haze of nostalgia, twenty years ago doesn’t seem that far away to me, but so much of this stuff looks so archaic when you really look at it, especially the electronics with all their tacky, faux-woodgrain cabinets… wow. My late grandmother’s antique ’30s-vintage radio (which now resides in my living room) actually looks more timeless than that stuff.

Here are some highlights:

• My first computer was an Atari 800XL, purchased when most people still didn’t know what the hell a computer was good for. Notice, for example, how heavily the marketing copy relies on Atari’s reputation as a maker of video games (“Back deck offers enough ports and outlets to plug into all the fun” — as if an early word processor and the need to know BASIC was all that fun to the average person). I didn’t quite know what to do with a computer either, so this thing (along with a peripheral 5-inch floppy drive and a dot-matrix printer) served me essentially as a very expensive typewriter throughout my high school and college years. I’m sure it won’t surprise my three loyal readers to learn that I still have my 800XL, although I don’t know if it works any longer; the box it was in took a pretty good soaking during my recent basement flood, and I don’t know if the water got to the contents of said box or just ruined the cardboard. One of these weekends, it might be fun to hook it up and see if it survived the damp.
• Remember when “casual seating” consisted of lime-green bean bags? Sure you do… and everyone thinks those damn LoveSacs are so original and cool…
• My uncle had one of these free-standing, middle-of-the-room-style fireplace pots. Looking at this ad, I’m thinking he should’ve had a smoking jacket, ascot, and glass of brandy, too.
• You think young people wearing athletic warm-up suits as regular clothing is a disturbing new trend? I beg to differ with you..
• T-shirts featuring Mr. T, Q-bert, Garfield, and the Ewoks. It doesn’t get more 1983 than that, baby.
• Speaking of Ewoks, here’s a section of the wishbook that would’ve given me kittens back in the day, if I hadn’t already outgrown much of this stuff by 1983. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you… the Return of the Jedi collection!
  A complete bedroom set, including an R2-D2 hamper
  Miscellaneous toys
  ROTJ PJs
  Action figures and ships
  Playsets
  Wish I had one of everything in this section, in its original package.
• Something for the ’80s girls in the audience: Care Bears!
• I’d forgotten that Garfield the overweight cartoon cat was so damn popular; the ’83 Wishbook featured six pages of Garfield merchandise. Six! That’s as many as Return of the Jedi got. And that’s just plain wrong.
  Garfield
  More Garfield
  Yet more Garfield
  Still more Garfield
  Who is this Garfield anyway?
  Enough with the damn Garfield already!
• When I was in about the 8th grade, One of my proudest possesions was a tacky gold digital watch that played chirpy, MIDI-style renditions of four classic tunes by The Beatles. I can recall three of them — “Yesterday,” “She Loves You,” and “Michelle” — but the fourth escapes me. I remember that “Yesterday” was my favorite, and “Michelle” was completely unfamiliar to me until many years later when I finally bought a Beatles CD. I don’t know what happened to that watch. But I’m pretty sure that’s a picture of it in the upper righthand corner of this page.
• And finally, if you want to know what was considered hot in 1983, I’ve got one word for you: aerobics! As the Virginia Slims ads used to say, we’ve come a long way, baby…