A randomly nostalgic post by Maynard

American males above a certain age will probably remember the Johnson Smith catalog. It was once part of every boy’s life, full of pranks and magic and contraptions and other fascinating stuff. And cheap, too. Every now and then you’d scrape up enough allowance money to order a few trinkets. Mostly they turned out to be flimsy and silly. The X-Ray spex couldn’t really see through girls’ clothing, and the Ventrilo didn’t actually help you throw your voice. But it didn’t matter. Johnson Smith was part of the magic of childhood.

(I’m thinking maybe America was a better place when kids were less political and more interested in inducing their peers to take a bite out of a rubber hot dog. Isn’t that what youth is all about? And I bet the U.N. would be a more civil institution if the ambassadors snuck around putting whoopee cushions under each others’ seats.)

Here’s a magazine advertisement from 1933, which was long before my time, but it captures the essence of the magic. Click on the picture to go to the full-sized page.

The 1929 Johnson Smith catalog peaked at more than 700 pages and offered something like eight thousand items. By the time of my misspent youth, it was down to under a hundred pages and two or three thousand items. (The older catalogs carry material that offends our modern sensibilities, such as handguns (“protection for ladies against moron attacks” (“moron attack” seems to have been a common phrase of the era)) and racially insensitive imagery. Yes, you’d send them $7.50, and they’d send you a gun. Freedom! Right here in the U.S.A.! Imagine that!)

Unaware of Johnson Smith’s glorious history, I still found their catalog fascinating in my era. These days, the company still exists, but it’s just another minor purveyor of trashy kitsch in a world full of trashy kitsch.

The 1929 catalog was reprinted in 1970, and isn’t too hard to find. (For example, here are Amazon listings.) Original and reprint catalogs appear regularly on Amazon and eBay and elsewhere, at wildly varying prices.

Here is an amusing (to me, anyway) page by another nostalgic misfit, fondly remembering the nonsense he once rushed to spend his youthful nickels on.

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4 Comments | Leave a comment
  1. thierry says:

    how charming- they have “Anarchist Bombs” for sale. bet young first best friend bill ayers saved up for the gross box. seriously- in 1933 they were not so far removed from the many anarchists who did set bombs off , including on wall street. that is was a joke so soon is odd but then again so is building a mosque on ground zero.

    in between semesters at college i worked for a mail order vitamin company that used almost the exact same crummy layout for it’s magazine ads- with a little clippy coupon at the bottom .they gave away free fruitcakes if you ordered a certain amount. fruitcakes and vitamins.

    • KatieSilverSpring says:

      regularity, thierry, is the benefit of a good fruitcake of which I am an excellent baker, as well as the fruitcake being a good accompaniament to a nice glass of sherry in the afternoon – vitamins I take not bake

      • thierry says:

        i too actually have the you won’t believe it’s fruitcake fruitcake recipe. it’s moist and delicious and you can’t operate heavy machinery after having some.

        but this mail order freebie was more like a brick. i beat one with a broom handle one day on the mailing room floor- couldn’t put a dent in it. (that had to have been the worst job i have ever had- it was life in hell.). they moved on to free plastic cuckoo clocks.

  2. candace52 says:

    Maynard – Man I loved Johnson Smith ads. I actually bought the Hypno coin and I did “hypnotized” my younger nieces.

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