Sears to Revive Their Christmas Wishbook
Sears Christmas Wishbook was part of the Christmases of my childhood. Every autumn the Wishbook would come out and with it came my dreams of Christmas. I literally once had a dream where I won a Sears contest that gave the winner one item from every page in the Wishbook. I dreamt that I had to go page to page to find a whole truckload of items of that would be delivered to my house.
Sears killed their Wishbook — and seemingly, my childhood — more than 14 years ago. At that time catalogues in general were in demise. The truth of it was really that Sears was in demise and as a company it has fought for retail relevance ever since.
The 100+ year old company now turns to the nostalgia of the Wishbook in hopes that it can spur sales in it’s old and tired format. But something tells they’re going to mess it up. After all, this is the company who merged with Kmart to improve their image and market share.
The Wishbook was a popular Christmas tradition for one reason: it felt like Christmas. When we would go to Sears to get one — or, going way back — would simply get one in the mail we never actually thought of buying anything. That wasn’t what it was all about. That is probably why they deep sixed it in the first place. The Wishbook was just that — a book for wishing.
Now Sears is the one doing the wishing and I have my doubts.
The 2007 Sears Wish Book Catalog is already available, but the retailer will unveil a “larger than life” version of the 188-page catalog in Times Square in mid-November, hosted by Ty Pennington, host of ABC’s “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” and a Sears spokesman.
That’s sounds anything but Christmasy. In those days of my childhood we didn’t have Monte Hall hawking the Wishbook. We just had the Wishbook and it generated magic all on its own.
Those days are gone. And, sadly, so too is the traditional Wishbook — no matter how hard Sears tries to bring it back.
