Even us guys born in the 50's remember this and in our house my mother was an Adjuster for Sears so we got a 25% management discount!!

Eaton's had a great one too!

Thanks for this Todd.

I had sizzlers. And spent many a night in bed, as a kid before Christmas with the Wish book.

That's cool.  I remember the Eaton's Christmas Catalog, but I'm sure there was a Sears one (or out west it was Simpson-Sears) as well.   I'm of the Hot Wheels generation, but I don't think I've ever seen some of those sets.  Many Many Many hours of fun with our Hot Wheel & Sizzlers, not to mention my purple Simpson-Sears 3 speed Banana Bike I got in the spring of 1971.

Carl Stevenson wrote:

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For some reason in our house we did nothing with Sears. It was all from Eaton's. 

That is where I first laid eyes on the 12volt Strombecker race set for $19.95 or $19.98, whatever it was. I saved my money, working in our family's tree nursery until I had enough to buy that set. 
I still have that kit but that stuff is plain worn out. The cars have had a HARD life!

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 Ditto ... but that was because my mom worked at a Eaton's catalogue office. She got a nice discount on everything Eaton's had to offer. I used to dog-ear and circle tons of items in the Wish Book to broaden my chances of getting 50% of them!

I still have my Eldon race track and it's in pretty good shape ... I fired it up about 11 years ago, for the first time in decades.

Eldon racetrack with Ferraris (this was one of mine as a kid)

Wow, is that ever a "remember when".

When the Sears Wish Book showed up, or the Eaton's Catalogue, mom would ask us to let her know what sort of things we wanted for Christmas. We would happily pour over the catalogue and try to figure out how to whittle down our wish list to a reasonable size. I remember many if not most of those items shown. That Christmas my brother and I received a Hot Wheels Sizzler set. I had a gold 70 Boss 302 & a 69 Trans Am. I also received a Hot Wheels Silver Special, complete with a Mattel magazine, club patch & certificate of authenticity. I also remember getting one of those "Snap Tight" Sopwith Camels with Snoopy at the helm. I think that year for Christmas my brother also got The Guess Who - American Woman, plus Rare Earth - Ecology. They also sold musical instruments and I was always facinated by the electric guitars with the whammy bars and the sunburst finish over the black body.

I can remember my older brother and a friend sitting on the front steps, looking through the catalogue and gigling at the underwear section. They were simpler times when we were easily amused. We were free-range children that came home when mom blew the dinner whistle. If dad had to bring out the dory horn we knew that we were in trouble if we didn't get there in the next 2 minutes. We could hear that horn across the entire neighborhood. It was a safe neighborhood and I could play in the pond to the north, the dam that led to Tiffany Falls to the south, or we could go deep into the woods. Or across the neighborhood we could watch the trucks labor up the Highway 2 hill before the 403 existed. Yes, I can still recall the cars that most of the neighbors had.