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Before there was Wi-Fi on planes, you had few choices. Sleep. Eat. Watch the in-flight movie. Do whatever work or reading (you know, from actual BOOKS) you had brought with you. Or flip through the inflight magazines that were in the seatback pocket.

Each airline had its own version. Delta had Sky Magazine. American had American Way. United had Hemispheres Magazine. Other airlines had their own respective versions. But they were really all the same. There’d be an introduction in both English and Spanish. Some fluffy articles about what to see in certain cities. Something about technology. Pages upon pages of The Best Doctors in America (BTW, here’s how they found them. What a scam!). A crossword puzzle that, invariably, someone else had already completed in ink. But hey, it was a decent way to pass a few minutes.

In-flight magazines disappeared in the early months of the Covid pandemic, and never came back (to be fair, United still offers Hemispheres magazine, online). But even before Covid killed those, there was another in-flight magazine that had disappeared about a half-decade before.

SkyMall.

SkyMall made its debut in commercial aviation’s seatback pockets in 1990. It was a catalog originally intended to get customers to order within 20 minutes of landing and have the goods waiting for them upon arrival (or the next day). That didn’t work out so well, so they quickly switched to home delivery of whatever goods a person would order.

SkyMall’s publisher hustled to get its catalogs seen. At one point, they reached 88% of US airline passengers. So there was a point where, if you flew, chances were excellent you’d find a SkyMall catalog within arm’s reach. At its best, the catalog had an annual circulation of approximately 20 million copies distributed in airplane seat pockets.

I gotta tell ya, travel friends – as much as I enjoyed reading those in-flight magazines, I’ve always adored catalogs since I was a little kid (Carol Wright anyone? OMG, that’s still around, too!) and the SkyMall catalog was my favorite. The stuff they offered was nothing like the catalogs we got at home.

We’re talking Bigfoot Garden Yeti statues by Design Toscano…

And pet crate tables…

And the Skyrest Travel Pillow.

PC: Troy Tolley / flickr / CC BY-ND-2.0 DEED

And who can forget Roswell the Alien Butler pedestal table…

I LOVED reading those catalogs!

Hard times

But as much as I loved reading SkyMall, I can’t recall ever actually buying anything from them (Joe says he thinks he got a bug vacuum from Hammecher Schlemmer through them once [Joe’s not a fan of creepy crawlies], but that was about it). I guess less and less other people did either, because SkyMall was sold several times since 1999. In fact, whoever owned them in the early 2010s even made SkyMall vending machines!

Finally, in early 2015, SkyMall declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy. However 3 months later, it was purchased out of bankruptcy court by C&A Marketing for $1.9 million (they appear to buy a lot of companies out of bankruptcy. SkyMall, Ritz Camera & Image, Saris, Calumet Photographic, etc.) and have been under that company ever since.

Nowadays, SkyMall can be found online. The beginning of their “About Us” makes it sound like they’re still the same company, even though they’ve changed hands a bajillion times.

Ah, we remember it like it was yesterday: Over a quarter century ago, on a 1989 flight from Seattle to Phoenix, the idea for a unique retailer made accessible exclusively to air travelers was born. (These were the days before in-flight WiFi and ebooks.) A year later, SkyMall had arrived! Our first ever catalog was published and distributed to passengers on Eastern Airlines flights, and a cultural institution (that’s us! If we do say so ourselves…) was created.

Not all of their stuff is as whimsical as it used to be – they’ve got wine coolers, storage racks, and air mattresses. But they have some oddball stuff like a 7′ tall inflatable water slide and a mini portable projector. Oh, and the Bigfoot the Garden Yeti is still available too (but he’s currently out of stock. Whomp whomp).

Going through the SkyMall online catalog online is nothing like paging through its hard copy catalog on a plane. But going through actual catalogs is pretty much a thing of the past anyway. At least SkyMall is still around.

Feature Photo: PC: Kelly Taylor / flickr / CC BY-SA 2.0 DEED

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