It's definitely sad, but nostalgia often is, I think the last time I had an Argos catalogue in the house was probably more than 20 years ago! It's a good time to retire the thing, less paper going to waste.
Very warm memories of leafing through that thing as a child though, I distinctly remember being fascinated by the digital watch pages full of Casio's and other watches that did all sorts of unnecessary nonsense (TV remote watch, anyone?) - but as a child these pages were full of desire.
In some ways the catalogue shopping experience seemed better than what internet shopping is like today, leafing through the pages or flipping to relevant, organised section of the book to look at the things just felt, I dunno, slower, more pleasurable? Might be that nostalgia kicking in, but looking at Amazon.co.uk now there's no 'window shopping' experience at all, it's the same UI as they had in 2000 just with a bit of paint on it. Rows and rows of products displayed on a grid, sometimes clones of products put directly next to each other, not really clear who you are buying from until you read the small print on the product page.
Very warm memories of leafing through that thing as a child though, I distinctly remember being fascinated by the digital watch pages full of Casio's and other watches that did all sorts of unnecessary nonsense (TV remote watch, anyone?) - but as a child these pages were full of desire.
In some ways the catalogue shopping experience seemed better than what internet shopping is like today, leafing through the pages or flipping to relevant, organised section of the book to look at the things just felt, I dunno, slower, more pleasurable? Might be that nostalgia kicking in, but looking at Amazon.co.uk now there's no 'window shopping' experience at all, it's the same UI as they had in 2000 just with a bit of paint on it. Rows and rows of products displayed on a grid, sometimes clones of products put directly next to each other, not really clear who you are buying from until you read the small print on the product page.