Posted By Dan Greenfield on Nov 29, 2025 | 9 comments

TOYHEM! There was the Sears Wish Book — and there was this…

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Welcome to TOYHEM! For the seventh straight holiday season, we’re bringing you a series of features and columns celebrating the toys of our youth, which often made for the best memories this time of year. Click here to check out the complete index of stories — and have a Merry Christmas, a Happy Chanukah and Happy Holidays! — Dan

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By JIM BEARD 

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.

(Well, don’t actually do that, or you won’t get an article.)

A guy (Ivan Snyder) buys the mail-order service he’d been running for Marvel Comics and strikes off on his own. He opens up actual stores, has cool catalogs, and makes a name for himself. Later, he’s so successful with an entire line of retail stores (Heroes World) that 20 years or so down the line, Marvel buys him back. And the rest, as they say, is history.

1976

But, wait a mo’ — let’s concentrate today on those catalogues. Yeah, you know the ones I mean. Those catalogs from the mid-1970s, the ones you pored over and told your parents you basically wanted everything in them. The Superhero Catalog from Superhero Enterprises Inc. (They also had names like The Superhero Book, The Superhero Merchandise Catalog and The Heroes World Catalog.)

They were garish and groovy, tawdry and titanic. They featured art from New Jersey’s prestigious Kubert School and they laid out your dreams in four-color, carnival-barker format. There was stuff you recognized, and stuff you’d never seen. And like I said, you wanted it all.

1977

I was lucky back then to have owned several of those books (they were the size and feel of actual comics), and lucky today to still have two of them (from 1976 and 1977). I thought we’d take a little tour of them both and I’d point out 13 examples of what Ivan and the gang offered us back then… which of course were dreams and wishes and flights of fantasy in paper and plastic — if only Mom and Dad would pony up some cash to make those dreams come true.

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Give a Medallion to the One You Love. Nothin’ says lovin’ like a solid bronze, hand-antiqued, individually registered medallion of… Conan the Barbarian. I heard the chicks really dug it. Personally, I wanted the Spidey one, kind of as an expression of self-love, I guess.

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Mighty Marvel Mirrors. The ’76 catalog upped the ante by offering the gift that keeps giving right back to you — with your own freakish, pre-teen face. The Bicentennial mention… wow. Even in a superhero catalog. It really was everywhere.

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Super Sale. I’m not sure why this page of product was more of a “sale” than anything else (though I suspect it was stuff they were trying to get rid of), but I dig the mix of monsters (the Aurora Prehistoric Scenes Allosaur! The Hulk!) with the Apes and a poor, lonely puzzle of our Neighborhood-Friendly webslinger.

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The Biggest Rock Event of the Decade. Move over, Led Zeppelin! Your days as a “rock event” are finished! “Reflections of a Rock Superhero” is takin’ the music world by storm, baby! Just make sure if you must buy only one rock album in 1976, it must be this one, True Believer! Excelsior!

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Superhero Sleeping Bag. I’m gonna just leave this one right here and walk away, so as not to embarrass any of you who wanted it and possibly even got it.

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1976: A Super Year. Proud to say I had everything on these two pages, and still do. So there.

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The Superhero Shop. Let’s take a moment here as we segue into the ’77 catalog to drool over this inner cover. I don’t know about you, but I wanted to go there as much as I wanted to go to Disney World, and that’s saying a lot.

NOTE FROM DAN: I went there, Jim.

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Enter the World of Marvel. The ’77 catalog starts off pretty Marvel-heavy (no duh there), and what better way to do it but to push the GOAT Marvel toy, the gorgeous Marvel World cardboard playset. I no longer have mine, but it lives rent-free in my head forever.

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Our Superhero. Yeah, OK, not an item you could buy, but I didn’t want to pass up Ivan’s attempt to give some, ahem, character to his catalogs in the form of this guy… and make sure his artists got a little promo, too.

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Batmania Is on the Loose Again. Don’t let anyone tell you Batmania died off after the ’66 TV series and didn’t start up again until 1989. These catalogues were keeping the Batsignal on in the belfry with this titanic two-page spread of Bat-goodies. Love that drawing of a joyous Batman… laughing all the way to Bruce Wayne’s bank, no doubt.

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Superhero Puzzles. I’m an unapologetic puzzle guy; always have been, always will. I remember recognizing some of these offered here as a kid, and drooling over the ones I didn’t. Today, I’d be ordering every single one.

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Write Your Own T-Shirt. What an oddball concept. Did anyone actually do this? Was whatever you wrote forever? And please note how much Ivan loved you with that “all over” shirt (which was actually pretty damn cool).

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Shine On With the Super Heroes. This is the back cover of the ’77 catalog, puns and all, an example of a time when “going off-model” with copyrighted characters just didn’t hit the radar of the copyright holders the way it does today. And wrist radios? Really? How did that work? Did it work at all?

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MORE

— The Complete TOYHEM INDEX of Stories and Features. Click here.

— 13 GREAT GIFTS From the SEARS CHRISTMAS WISH BOOK — 1974-1987. Click here.

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When JIM BEARD’s not editing and publishing through his two houses, Flinch Books and Becky Books, he’s pounding out adventure fiction with both original and licensed characters. In fact, he’s put words in the mouths of Luke Skywalker, Superman, Fox Mulder, Carl Kolchak, Peter Venkman and the Green Hornet… and lived to tell about it.

Check out his latest: Jack of All Comics! is 28 essays by some of today’s most engaging comic historians and fans on nearly every series Jack Kirby worked on for Marvel and DC from 1961 to 1978. It’s better’n a Boom Tube to Supertown, True Believers! Click here to order.