I had a copy of it when I was a kid in the 1970’s. It was a collection of odd objects that you could supposedly purchase from some bizarre mail-order company. Each page had two or three products with short descriptions and black & white drawings.
I remember one of the products was a folding travel globe. There was also a “fop’s prophylactic” – a lace condom – which puzzled me to no end since at the time I knew nothing about birth control methods.
Ring any bells?
Items From Our Catalog, perhaps? It had color photography though.
It was more trippy and subversive. It had a definite hippie/counterculture vibe. I probably got it sometime between 1972 and 1978. It wasn’t a parody of any particular catalog (that I know of). It was just a collection of bizarre products.
I seem to remember that the cover itself was black with a white oval with one of the products (maybe the folding globe) displayed inside.
No, I’ve tracked it down with Google!
It was The Catalog of Extraordinary Objects by Jacques Carelman
Here’s an exampleof the sort of thing it contained. (From the French version.)
That was one fun year of writing out simple “I find your ideas intriquing and wish a sample of your literature” requests.
Of course, that was years before I got the Net!
