I miss getting on a plane and reading Skymall to see what batshit crazy stuff they had to sell. Anyone else?
The trip to sharper image was not complete until you got to sit in the massage chair.
The spirit of it still exists in temu ads. Turn off your ad blocker for a minute and you’ll be inundated with cheap plastic things that you think are great ideas and you’ll use once and forget about.
That’s a great point.
Yeah dude that stuff always blew my mind as a kid. Browsing the real sharper image store then was a treat too. I got a skymall hot dog toaster one Christmas and it was amazing.
I’m convinced that all the stupid shit in Skymall is still available on the Internet, but I miss having it all collected in one place. The curated ridiculousness was perfect.
You mean like skymall.com?
Big foot statue is there. It’s legit.
Edit: although many, many things are listed as “sold out”. Most things, in fact.
I got on a plane a few weeks ago and realized that I didn’t have headphones. I would have really liked something to read. AA does offer 20 free minutes of WiFi so I opened a bunch of tabs in my browser, but a skymall would ah e been read for sure.
A quick Google search shows both companies are still in business, so not much to miss? I imagine they are put SkyMall on some airlines
A ton of Sharper Image stuff gets sold at Walmarts in the “As Seen On TV” section.
Wow. I didn’t even bother searching. Just assumed since I no longer saw it in the plane backseat they weren’t around anymore.
Nope, not one bit.
I loved that stuff but never got to buy anything really. Probably for the best it was all junk in the end. Stuff that looked cool but you didn’t need any of it really.
I did have one of their CD players that had cool blue lights and a motorized door that opened down. That thing was pretty wicked. I remember I didn’t have the remote for it for some reason, so I casually stole one from the display model at the sharper image store in the mall.
But I felt like I needed ALL of it. of course couldn’t afford any of it.
And for all the people like me who wanted all that fun stuff, there were probably some people out there who COULD afford all of it.
I used to love going into The Sharper Image and Brookstone stores at the mall when I was a kid.
I used to love going in those two stores to sample the massage chairs.
How about the DAK catalogs?
Or the “Things You Never Knew Existed” catalogs, which were by the guys that used to sell a bunch of the stuff in the back of comics, Boys’ Life, etc (Johnson Smith Company) - X-Ray specs, fake dog poop, etc. But on steroids. Selling huge magnet things, car kits, Mr Mooney dolls, weird statues, magic kits, fake rocks, etc.
Edit: LOL, I found one. Man, brings me back to going through as a 9 year od:
https://archive.org/details/the-johnson-smith-company-catalog-913-circa-1991-starbrite
Why have I never owned a wrist kite???
DAK catalogs were wild. Each item had a magazine article length description that was clearly bullshit. But by the end you’re certain that the constant emptiness you feel is from not owning the World’s Best 16 Channel Stereo Graphic Equalizer.
Holy shit. Well I still have the EQ, and also the Spectrum Analyzer attached to my new stereo.
Don’t recall that.
Not really. The world has changed so much that I don’t think there’s space for them anymore. But they were pretty great when I was a dumb kid.
Wait what? Have you seen what people order on temu or even amazon? It’s way way worse now.
Always wanted those shoes with the spring in your step
It’s a map and you JUMP to CONCLUSIONS!
Only if my battery runs out on the plane.
Here you go:
