Customer Reviews

More Boys' Toys of the Fifties and Sixties: Toy Pages from the Great Montgomery Wards Christmas Catalogs, 1950-1969

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The fascinating content of this book is marred considerably by the extremely bleached-out picture quality on some pages. Other pages are fine, but it's nearly impossible to see any details of certain toys at all. Particularly bad are the sections showing the plastic soldier/farm-type playsets.

Type quality is good throughout, however, and the content is exactly what I was hoping to see. Certainly takes me back to happy times. I would give this book 5 stars if the pictures were more legible.

It is amazing the memories that this book, and it's companion volume on Sear's Wishbooks, can stir up. So many other childhood memories of family, friends, school, neigborhoods come flooding back- all triggered by some favorite toy that you either owned or dreamed of owning. Everying from Marx playsets, Remco greats like the Big Caesar Roman Galley and the Barracuda Sub, Ideal classics like Robot Commando.... And let us not forget Hopalong Cassidy, Tom Corbett, Lone Ranger, Batman, etc. merchandise. Be careful though, or you'll end up on EBAY with this book in one hand searching the listings for that favorite toy that got away (it is amazing how many are available at reasonable prices....)

I'd looked at this for a few years, for a friend of mine who reminisces about his childhoood toys. I finally found this at a reasonable price and ... this period of catalog was simply that: just a catalog. I grew up in the late 60s and 70s, when color had been added, the pictures were beautiful - making you feel like you could almost reach out and touch the items, and these catalogs were selling items by that beautiful "larger than life" marketing. It didn't occur to me how banal and basic they would have been just previous to that. This has more the look of a Goodwill clearance house catalog than anything else.