Mail order Catalogues

[shilton dipper]

Re: Mail order Catalogues




this thread is brill............looking at the pics takes me right back and i had no idea that argos had been going so long.

[themilkman]

Re: Mail order Catalogues

http://www.retronaut.com/2010/12/argos-catalogue/

[battyrat]

Re: Mail order Catalogues

Those shoes.lol.
I don't remember dad wearing shoes like that,but then he grew up in the 50's.Our next door neighbour used to wear them back in the 70's.He was fairly fasionable back then along with his wife.They were much younger then my parants.When they went out they always dressed well.Thinking back the fasion then was rather outragous.The last pair of shoes like that I saw recently in a charity shop in our hometown.Great clash of colours....and platforms.

[themilkman]

Re: Mail order Catalogues

And I liked looking at the bikes!!!

[Kaptain_Von]

Re: Mail order Catalogues

I remember my gran always had the Traffords catalogue back in the 70s. Amazing that back in those days you could order a toaster from one page and a shotgun or hunting rifle from the next. However, what always sticks in my memory is Green Shield stamps, possibly due to an event that happened in the 70s.

At the time we were living in Weymouth and it was the last week of the summer holidays. I had come home from staying with my grandparents for the previous five weeks and my friends and I were making the most of our last week of freedom by cycling into town and playing in the amusement arcades. At the time, one, the Royal Arcade had several fruit machines that paid out either 2ps for lower end prizes or Green Shield stamps for the higher scoring prizes. One of the machines had gone wrong in spectacular fashion and us kids discovered it. Every second spin paid out the jackpot in stamps and every third spin paid a minor prize of between 4p and 8p. Using our pocket money we picked up quite a few stamps that way.

The next day, we returned armed with school bags and the contents of our piggy banks and between us cleared the machine out of stamps. One of us (who shall remain nameless) even had the nerve to go to the attendant and tell him that the machine had run out of stamps so that it was refilled whilst the rest of stood with school bags filled with stamps. We did that for the next two days until someone in the arcade twigged that something was up, possibly due to the dozens of kids with schoolbags, carrier bags and satchels filling the place and suddenly the machine had an 'Out of Order' sign on it when we returned.

However, it meant that we walked away with absolutely Imperial shedloads of stamps. Sticking them in the books was a bit of a chore though and took weeks to do in my spare time. It was worth it though as on my next trip to my grandparents I took a bag filled with books of stamps and was taken to the Green Shield Stamp showroom in what used to be Fairfax St in Bristol. It was like one of those Hollywood films where someone opens a case of wads of money as I fished them out of the bag and went through the catalogue going "I'll have one of those, one of those and one of those and one of those too...". I was lucky my grandad was there to help as there would have been no way I could have carried the mountain of Action Man kit, felt pens, toy soldiers, model kits, Lego and Matchbox cars that a faulty fruit machine had enabled me to buy.

[jason h]

Re: Mail order Catalogues


I had this Addidas jacket, pictured here in the 1981 Grattan Catalogue.

And we had this Fidelity Hi-Fi (bottom) seen here in the same catalogue.

[Romany Jones.]

Re: Mail order Catalogues

[LivedOnMars]

Re: Mail order Catalogues

Fab thread, now I know where everyone bought my Christmas presents - I had the Girls World, little cash register, jewellery making set, paddling pool and wendy house. Toys were so simple back then, seems like we had less but appreciated it more. I remember getting really excited waiting months for Christmas just to get the Grease album. I remember my Dad wearing those big clumpy shoes, with his flares and big hair with massive sideburns. I loved my Mum's catalogues; I used to spend hours making pretend orders...online shopping isn't so exciting in comparison is it?

[ayrshireman]

Re: Mail order Catalogues

Most people don't realise that we British invented online shopping (in 1979).

[LivedOnMars]

Re: Mail order Catalogues

1979, really? I didn't even know that the internet existed then!

[sixtyten]

Re: Mail order Catalogues

It didn't (at least the way we know it)
He was refering to this..
http://www.instantshift.com/2010/03/...g-in-nutshell/

[stud1al]

Re: Mail order Catalogues

Surely I'm not alone in always wanting to be the first to read the new Kays,Littlewood,etc catalogue when it was delivered in the 70's??
straight to the toy section (always dissapointed with the summer edition).
being a retrohead,I often wondered If anyone still had any old copies of these,but the search proved fruitless till the advent of EBay.
although some of these can cost an arm and a leg now,you can pick up the odd scanned versions on Cd.I got a couple of these recently..good memories...CB radios,huge VCR's,Video 2000!! early home PC's and of course toys galore.
though now, at my age its just as much fun looking at the appalling fashions and homewear we use to have. we must have furnished our entire house via Kays!!!

The Seventies..truly the decade taste forgot!

Fashion back then wasn't so bad,70.
I would rather 70s fashion than that baggy pants worn backwards fashion (When was that? The 80s or 90s?) and the long shorts or short longs you see people wearing.

[80sChav]

Re: Mail order Catalogues

What great memories it evokes reading the replies about the various Catalogue's!!

Sadly it will never ever be the same - looking on the internet as it was in Tennage Years/early 20s in the 1980s/1990s!

Who else can recall looking in the Catalogue's and looking at the new Footy Shirts ?!!?, halcyon day's indeed! It was almost (in a way) like it was before Sunday Shopping was allowed I feel/think.

80sChav

[DSCOMAN]

Re: Mail order Catalogues

is this the 'sticky mail order catalogues' page?....i'll get me coat

[darren]

Re: Mail order Catalogues

I just loved reading catalogues flicking thru it for hrs looking at all the lovely pics.
So many amazing toys.
Be it kays or any catalogue i could not wait to read them.