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Your Wish(book) is My Command

February 25, 2022/ D.E.Hardy

One of the joys of writing historical fiction is having an excuse to slide down internet wormholes in the name of “period research.” A go-to source of mine is old catalogs.

Me: How much for a Betsy Wetsy in 1937?

Internet:

Betsy Wetsy Ad

Does my novel involve a Betsy Wetsy? No. Is it even set in 1937? Not as such.

Ten minutes of digging for the copy line “She’s Rubber and Loves a Bath”?

100% worth it.

If the internet is a rainbow, catalogs are my pot of gold. Recently, I discovered the biggest trove of all: Wishbook Web, which houses Every. Single. Sears. Holiday. Wish Book.

EVER.

This discovery led to hours of me not working on my novel whatsoever because–holy actual crap–you can view the entirety of the 1985 Wish Book.

breathing

Let me take you back.

1985: I was 10. I didn’t have a lot of friends. We had just moved, and I was an introvert prone to talking to myself. My dad was nearing the peak of his second (third?) mid-life crisis, and my mom was busy trying to clean that up. I can’t remember if my dad was out of work yet. If he wasn’t, that shitstorm was on the near horizon. Anyhoo–that year, the Wishbook clocked in at almost 650 pages, and arrived sometime in early November.

This catalog was a stunner. It sold everything you ever wanted and quite a few things you’d never heard of but definitely needed.

My younger sister and I would fight over turns with it. And I mean FIGHT. Because this was a pre-internet, pre-Amazon world. We didn’t go shopping very often, and local stores had what they had, which was usually limited.

It wasn’t even about buying; it was about knowing what existed.

And the wishbook–goddamn–it had everything in the universe.

Just look at the 1985 cover:

Wishbook '85 Happy Girl Ad

Who can doubt that blonde girl is seeing the face of god?

That’s how good the Wish Book was.

When it was my turn, I would examine every page with the intensity of Indiana Jones looking for the lost ark. I browsed through menswear, through kitchen goods, despite having zero interest in these categories, because if it was in the Wish Book, it was worthy of your attention.

I would play a game: If I could buy one item off each page–but only one–which item would it be?

Some pages were easy. (Obviously the $2,500 life-sized horse.)

Some crushingly hard. (Coin counter or electric pig pencil sharpener. Oof.)

In this game, I was infinitely wealthy, and my family had awesome stuff. Like this. And this. My dad wore Joe Namath wool-blend separates, and my mom rocked the Cheryl Tiegs collection. (Unleash your “soft-spoken shine,” Mom!) They looked at each other like this, and I had cool hair like this.

The crowning glory of the book was the toy section. It had everything. An absolute toy miracle. Every He-man character. Every Voltron playset. Every Barbie item—the dream house and the corvette. You could even buy an actual flipping robot.

It was stunning.

My family could not afford such bounty, but to see it all in one place, in one book that I could hold in my hands, was almost as good. Consumption takes many forms, and the Wish Book more than scratched an itch. I knew a narrow slice of life. The Wish Book was my bridge to a bigger world.

I don’t know what maniacal soul decided to scan every single page of the 1985 Wish Book (and pay to host it!), but you, my good human, are a hero. Because here I am, thirty-seven years later, flipping through every single page with birthday-level joy.

It’s a gift to see some of these toys again, and the tech is hilarious, if only because I remember when it looked futuristic and modern. Oddly enough, despite the hours I’d spent hunched over this Wish Book, very few of the pages looked familiar all these years later.

Except one.

This page made me gasp when I saw it again, my 47 year-old brain hardly able to hold the awe:

Sears Slumber Bag Ad with Slumber Party

I remembered this page. How could I forget? This page is amazing.

Just look at those carefree girls: Their parents do awesome things–like buy matching sleeping bags for five. They have nice bedrooms and sleepovers, hair curlers and a popcorn machine. They have each other. They belong. Theirs is a Rainbow Sherbet wonderland.

Oh, to nestle in a pastel sleeping bag and listen to music with friends, throwing popcorn all over the place like my parents wouldn’t lose their shit at that much commotion.

The ombre rainbows. The laughter. The popcorn mid-air.

To possess that moment was to feel whole–or so it seemed–and I remember wanting that so damn bad. And what was the point of a Wish Book if you couldn’t make a wish?

Headshot D.E.Hardy

D.E. Hardy’s work has appeared (or is forthcoming) in X-R-A-Y Magazine, Lost Balloon, Sledgehammer Lit, New World Writing, among others. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and can be followed on twitter @dehardywriter and at www.dehardywriter.com.

Midnight Snack Archive

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Friday Lunch Blog

Friday Lunch! A serving of contemporary essays published the second Friday of every month.

Today’s course:

Behind the Eight Ball: How to Become Homeless in the Richest Country in the World

June 13, 2025/in Blog / Valerie Nyberg
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https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Valerie-Headshot-2.jpg 2000 1500 Valerie Nyberg https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Valerie Nyberg2025-06-13 11:55:462025-06-07 10:27:03Behind the Eight Ball: How to Become Homeless in the Richest Country in the World

Meeting My Child Self at the Trauma Play

May 9, 2025/in Blog / Gale Naylor
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https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Gale-Headshot-01July2024.jpg 1791 1587 Gale Naylor https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Gale Naylor2025-05-09 11:55:262025-05-11 09:48:03Meeting My Child Self at the Trauma Play

Products of Our Environment

March 14, 2025/in Blog / Mitko Grigorov
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Amuse-Bouche

Little bites every third Friday to whet your appetite!

Today’s plate:

Tale of the resistant apple tree

June 6, 2025/in Amuse-Bouche / Tahar Bekri, translated by Patrick Williamson
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https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/TaharBekri.jpg 512 340 Tahar Bekri, translated by Patrick Williamson https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Tahar Bekri, translated by Patrick Williamson2025-06-06 11:00:072025-06-02 19:06:30Tale of the resistant apple tree

Talyshi Wall Graffiti and other poems

May 30, 2025/in Amuse-Bouche / Ghazal
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https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Ghazal-headshot.jpg 867 590 Ghazal https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Ghazal2025-05-30 11:00:492025-05-30 06:09:09Talyshi Wall Graffiti and other poems

we don’t spend our lives in the belly of the fish

May 16, 2025/in Amuse-Bouche / translated from French by Gabriella Bedetti and Don Boes
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https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/headshot-translator-Gabriella-Bedetti.jpg 400 400 translated from French by Gabriella Bedetti and Don Boes https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png translated from French by Gabriella Bedetti and Don Boes2025-05-16 11:00:362025-05-14 17:05:21we don’t spend our lives in the belly of the fish

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School Lunch

An occasional Wednesday series dishing up today’s best youth writers.

Today’s slice:

I’ve Stayed in the Front Yard

May 12, 2021/in School Lunch, School Lunch 2021 / Brendan Nurczyk
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A Communal Announcement

April 28, 2021/in School Lunch, School Lunch 2021 / Isabella Dail
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https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/SL-FB-Isabella-Dail.png 788 940 Isabella Dail https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Isabella Dail2021-04-28 11:34:132021-04-28 11:34:13A Communal Announcement

Seventeen

April 14, 2021/in School Lunch, School Lunch 2021 / Abigail E. Calimaran
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Word From the Editor

The managers of Lunch Ticket all agreed that issue 26 needed to have a theme, and that theme had a responsibility to call for work relating to what we are seeing in society. We wanted a theme that resonated with Antioch University MFA’s mission of advancing “racial, social, economic, disability, gender, and environmental justice,” and we felt it was time to take a stand…

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