Vintage 70's / 80's Argos catalogues

subzero

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Just found a cool site with PDF's scans of all the 70's, 80's & 90's Argos catalogues and have been having a right nostalgia trip browsing through all the toy pages and looking at prices etc. What puzzles me though is the sheer lack of anything Star Wars? :? I thought there would have been a lot more in there considering how huge the toys were.

But Argos didn't advertise anything SW related until the Autumn 1979 catalogue and there ain't much in there at all, and then again nothing being advertised at all again until the Autumn 1982 edition which shows just a single page of a handful of ESB toys, maybe this was just an Argos thing and they were more advertised in others?, I don't know.

Anyway thought i'd post this as others may have fun with this...

http://retromash.com/argos/
 

Darth Bobby

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Wow, thats funny. I can remember the excitement of the new Argos catalogue coming out... (My mother still goes to Newcastle to collect one). Flicking to the back and looking at all of the toys, I didn't see much Star wars either, maybe they didn't need to advertise it? My mother had a Freemans catalogue too, I used to spend hours looking at it. It was another world. Good memories.
 

stu70

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Used to love the toy pages in those old catalogues, Freemans, Littlewoods etc, they also had another attraction for boys of a certain age shall we say :D
 

subzero

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I don't think my mom used to get the Argos catalogues in the 80's / early 90's, i'm pretty sure it was always Index or Littlewoods, her and my dad used to get it all on credit and literally spend the entire year up until the next xmas paying all the last xmas' stuff off.

Always remember the start back at school in Sep coinciding with seeing that the winter xmas catalogue had arrived at the house coming back from school one day, that was always exciting sitting through it for what must have been hours making every page turn last as long as possible :lol: and dreaming over the possibilities, but that was also the start of nearly 4 months of agonising waiting and dreaming.

I also seem to remember the catalogues we used to get had tons of toys in on quite a few pages, but these Argos ones don't seem to have as much.
 

poncho

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stu70 said:
Used to love the toy pages in those old catalogues, Freemans, Littlewoods etc, they also had another attraction for boys of a certain age shall we say :D
my mum tore the underwear section out before she gave me the catalogue :lol:

grattan
great universal i think it was
 

Ruby2511

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stu70 said:
Used to love the toy pages in those old catalogues, Freemans, Littlewoods etc, they also had another attraction for boys of a certain age shall we say :D

The lingerie section in Littlewoods catalogues were well worn in the 80's/90's :lol: :lol: :lol:
 

Ruby2511

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Used to love the new Argos book back in the day. Flick to the back to look at the latest BMX's and latest toys :lol:
 

Mini99

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Absolutely love the way this thread has gone from toys to "linger/underwear" in the space of a few posts!
I expected nothing less.... :lol:
 

theforceuk

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Why did you have to post this in the middle of the day on a week day, feels wrong looking through Argos catalogs at this time of day/week in 2018. :lol: Really nostalgic though. :lol: interesting the last Star Wars stuff was in the Spring/summer edition 1986.

The crap you could buy back then was unbelievable. :D
 

subzero

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Haha from vintage toy nostalgia to seedy underwear drooling within minutes. :lol:

One little thing I picked up on is how the toy section which we all recognise as always being near the back, was actually at the front of the catalogue up until the late 70's, funny how that changed.
 

spoons

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subzero said:
But Argos didn't advertise anything SW related until the Autumn 1979 catalogue and there ain't much in there at all, and then again nothing being advertised at all again until the Autumn 1982 edition which shows just a single page of a handful of ESB toys, maybe this was just an Argos thing and they were more advertised in others?, I don't know.

Anyway thought i'd post this as others may have fun with this...

http://retromash.com/argos/

Argos advertised SW throughout the early 80s but there isnt a lot to be had until ROTJ. I copied these pages from a site a while ago. Couldnt find anything from 1981

spring summer 1980

Argos_1980_a_spr_sum.jpg


autumn winter 1980

Argos_1980_b_aut_wint_2.jpg


spring summer 1982

Argos_1982_a_spr_sum.jpg
 

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spoons

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Here you go - here's all the pics from that earlier thread

http://www.starwarsforum.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=29718&hilit=argos

No bras though :lol:
 

Mini99

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I never realised how expensive the Falcon was!
We (my brother and I) wanted the Action Man training tower, but were told that was too expensive, the Falcon was £5.00 more!
We never had either by the way! :cry:
 

paulcalf

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subzero said:
But Argos didn't advertise anything SW related until the Autumn 1979 catalogue and there ain't much in there at all, and then again nothing being advertised at all again until the Autumn 1982 edition which shows just a single page of a handful of ESB toys, maybe this was just an Argos thing and they were more advertised in others?, I don't know.

Anyway thought i'd post this as others may have fun with this...

http://retromash.com/argos/

Although star wars was first shown in UK cinemas in December 1977, most UK cinemas didn't show it until 1978.

Star Wars toys wouldn't have featured in Spring 1978 argos catalogue as it would have been produced before the toys were available.
They probably didn't feature in Autumn 1978 and spring/summer 79 for a couple of reasons: Argos may not have known how popular SW would be/they couldn't get sufficient stock of the toys.

'Palitoy brings Star Wars to Planet Earth' advert didn't appear until 8th March 1978 and some of the figures advertised were drawings rather than pictures of figures.

Star wars Comics in June 1978 still had drawings of figures in adverts, rather than pictures of figures.
 
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