Before the age of online shopping, there was only one other way to browse your favorite store’s inventory from the comfort of your home: their mail-order catalog. Both a nuisance and a novelty, mail-order catalogs have been a part of American shopping culture since the 1940’s. Clever marketers of old understood the power of getting previews of the season’s items directly into the hands of consumers, and several of them have done better than others, launching their catalogs into cultural history.