The Sears Catalog Scandal of 1975 and the Best of Mail-Order Retail

What a Time to Be Alive: The Era of Mail-Order Catalogs

Believe it or not, mail-order catalogs have been around literally forever. The earliest form of a "printed sales list" type of retail dates back to 1498 when Aldus Manutius printed a catalog of books in Venice. In 1667, William Lucas printed and mailed seed lists to English customers. Colonial America saw Benjamin Franklin print mail-order catalogs for academic books in 1744. Finally, in 1872, Aaron Montgomery Ward released the first single-sheet list of 163 general items for his store in Chicago. This type of catalog would go on to become the most popular of all time and lead to the one we all know and love, the Sears catalog.

How the Sears Catalog Changed the Mail-Order Retail Game

Before we had Amazon, we had the Sears catalog. Mailed to your home and thicker than the Las Vegas phone book, this catalog had literally anything and everything you could imagine. The first edition came in 1888 and included watches and jewelry. In 1908 the debuted their Modern Homes catalog, where you could literally order the blueprints and materials to build a home, almost as easily as putting a Lego home together. What the Sears catalog did was change the game of mail-order retail. Their catalog eliminated the hassle of going to the store, provided anonymity and equity, expanded logistics, and offered an uncanny amount of options. In 1975, their Fall/Winter catalog produced a scandal so large it's still talked about today.

The 1975 Sears Catalog Scandal on Page 602

Producing a mail-order catalog requires a lot of people. Multiple teams review, edit, deny, and approve every word and image before final approval to print, which is why so many people were confused when they received the Fall/Winter edition of the catalog in 1975. Turn to page 602, and you'd find a couple of good-looking men, sporting the latest undergarments available. However, what people quickly noticed was what was NOT being covered by the boxers. One of the models had a little something hanging below the hemline, and mothers across America went crazy. While you REALLY had to be looking for the mishap to even notice, Sears did not catch it, and the catalog was mailed out before the error could be edited. Sears did their best to stop the catalog from continuing to sell, but to no avail. The informative video I have of the scandal includes the graphic image, so I will not include the video in this article. If you'd like to see the video about the scandal and a clip of the actual print ad, you can see it here.